Can't Go Back Now
by lawfan2016
Summary: AU. Emily-centric, but will focus on the team as a family, as well as Emily building her own family outside of the team. A decision Emily made to give Doyle's baby up for adoption is revisited and ends up changing her life as she knows it. Set during the general timeline of Season 14. Hotch still left the team, but will be part of the story
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **This first chapter is the prologue and is set in the past right after Ian Doyle was arrested by Interpol. After this, it will be set during the general timeline of Season 14, but will not follow the season exactly and will include cases we didn't see in the show. This is Emily-centric, but will focus on the team as a family, as well as Emily building her own family outside of the team. I love Emily's relationship with Rossi, JJ, and Reid so you can expect to see a fair amount of them bonding. I like Hotch / Prentiss and there will be some elements of that, but this isn't really a romance and anything that happens between them will take a while to happen. Hotch still left the team in this, but will be part of the story. Just let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for reading!

**Prologue**

Emily's fist clenched tightly around the white plastic stick in the palm of her left hand. She closed her eyes and exhaled. If she were being honest with herself, she'd known what the result would be before two lines appeared on the store-bought pregnancy test.

She was pregnant.

She'd been queasy for – how long had it been now? It had been weeks at least…maybe even a month? At first she chalked it up to stress and anxiety. They were about to take Ian Doyle down based on the information _she_ provided. Some of the information could only have come from her. If anything went wrong – if Doyle got away – he would know who was to blame. In the time she'd been undercover, Emily had seen firsthand what Ian Doyle did to anyone he considered a traitor. It was no wonder she was on edge in the weeks leading up to his arrest. But Emily Prentiss had never been physically ill from the stress of the job before. She should have immediately recognized the almost constant nausea for what it was – morning sickness that wasn't restricted to the morning, unfortunately.

It wasn't until the cravings started that Emily had to admit to herself there was a good chance she was pregnant. Emily had been craving apple juice. _Apple juice_, of all things. She hadn't had apple juice since…well, not since she was fifteen and pregnant. It was a drink typically reserved for children. Fortunately for her, the refrigerator in Ian's kitchen was stocked with juice boxes for his son.

Emily waited until after Doyle was taken in before she even thought about taking a pregnancy test. Ian couldn't know about this. He could _never_ know.

He had actually asked her to raise his son to be like him. The irony of a dangerous criminal asking a government agent to do that wasn't lost on Emily. Of course, she refused. The sweet little boy was innocent and had remained untainted by his father's world so far. But Emily wasn't naïve – she didn't expect that innocence to last…not with how Doyle wanted to raise the boy.

Emily sighed sadly. She wanted to save Declan from that fate, but she hadn't saved him…not really. Now he was just in a different kind of danger.

They needed something – _anything_ – that would break Ian Doyle. And Emily knew of only one thing that would do that…Ian's son. There would be no greater torture for the man than knowing his child was suffering and being powerless to stop it. That type of emotional and mental torture would be far worse than any physical torture.

Emily Prentiss left the boy out of her reports completely, but the taskforce had surveillance photographs of the little boy playing in the garden at Doyle's house in Italy. Emily knew the story that Declan was the housekeeper's son wouldn't hold up if they dug into it. If – no, _when_ \- they found out who Declan was, Emily was afraid they would see the son as collateral damage in the war against the father. They were desperate and would only get more desperate the longer Ian refused to give them anything. They would stop at nothing to get Ian to talk.

Emily's eyes flew open and she sucked in her breath, her gaze dropping to her stomach. The…baby – _her_ baby - would be in every bit as much danger as Declan because of who their father was. And there would be no denying Ian was the father, not when the baby was conceived while she was undercover. It would have been kind of hard for her to have a boyfriend or even a one-night-stand when she was living in Ian's house in Italy. No, when - _if_ \- Emily Prentiss had a kid, everyone who knew about the work the taskforce was doing would be able to do the math and figure out exactly who the baby's father was.

"What am I gonna do?" Emily despaired as the reality of her current situation hit her like a sucker punch.

When she thought of every agency involved and some of the corrupt governments that wanted to get their hands on the international criminal, Emily felt sick with worry and fear. Fighting a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea, she sat down on the tile floor with her back against the bathtub and drew her knees to her chest.

She trusted the taskforce - to a certain extent. Emily Prentiss didn't trust anyone completely. But she did trust Clyde and Tsia as much as she ever really trusted anyone. It was everyone else she was worried about.

Would the powers that be really use her unborn child as a method of torture for Doyle? Emily wouldn't put it past them. She was under no delusion that she was untouchable simply because of who she was and what her job was. It didn't preclude her – or this baby – from being used as a pawn in a political chess match. Emily _hated_ politics, but she had learned how to navigate political minefields at her mother's knee.

Emily doubted she'd get much help, if any, from the Agency. They wouldn't take too kindly to one of their own having a kid with a known criminal. She laughed bitterly, knowing it wouldn't matter that she was just doing her job. She would be branded as the undercover agent who got knocked up by her target.

What had they expected when they sent an agent who was Doyle's type in to get close to him? She knew they hadn't expected this. This wasn't part of the plan. Emily dragged the palm of her right hand down her face wearily. It wasn't like it was part of her plan either. She was on the pill, but grudgingly acknowledged that she must have missed one. She traveled with Doyle all the time. He was an international arms dealer and so was Lauren Reynolds. Travel time and time changes could have thrown her schedule off. She groaned, mentally cursing herself.

She stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, her eyes narrowing critically on her stomach. It didn't look like she'd gained any weight at all. She wondered how long she could keep the pregnancy under wraps. However long, Emily wouldn't have a whole lot of time to come up with some kind of a plan.

* * *

"Okay, that's enough," Emily said, setting the camera aside. She looked at the little boy sprawled on the ground. "You did great."

The boy didn't move a muscle.

Emily raised her eyebrows. "You can get up now."

He was usually a ball of energy, unable to sit still for even five minutes, but the boy _still _didn't move, never so much as blinking.

"What, did you fall asleep?" Emily muttered to herself, not expecting a response from the boy. "Declan? Hey, Declan?" She squatted down next to him. She barely touched his shoulder and he sprang to life, shooting up in a sudden movement that made her tense automatically as her training and instincts kicked in.

"Did I scare you?" Declan asked, grinning crookedly.

It was an old game. The little boy took great pleasure in finding hiding spots in the house in Italy and jumping out to scare the other inhabitants of the house or sneaking up on them from behind – as much as a child could possibly sneak up on a criminal and an intelligence operative. Emily knew it was normal behavior for a rambunctious little boy, but really Declan was lucky that between her and Ian, no one had ever startled and reacted badly purely on instinct.

"I don't scare that easy," Emily said, tickling his ribs in retaliation.

Declan shrieked in laughter, squirming away from her. "You didn't think I was dead?" He gasped.

"No. Sorry."

Declan took his failed attempt to scare her in stride. "It's just because I look pretty good for a dead kid," he said, looking up at her with a cocky grin.

"Yeah, you do," Emily agreed with a laugh. She shook her head at the little boy's antics and turned to face Louise, offering the other woman a smile that was half-apologetic, half-amused. "You might want to do something about that before you take him out in public," she said, referring to the make up and fake blood they'd used to make Declan appear fatally wounded in photographs. "As good as he looks, we don't want him scaring anyone else."

The pictures of Declan with a gun held to his head execution-style and then lying on the ground bleeding from a head wound were just the first part of Emily's plan. It had taken a week and a half for it all to come together.

Emily hadn't particularly liked holding a gun to the little boy's head, but he never even flinched. He knew he was never in any danger, at least not when she was the one holding the gun. Emily didn't know what she'd done to inspire so much trust. She just hoped his trust in her wasn't misplaced.

As soon as Declan was safely out of town, Emily Prentiss would give the staged pictures along with her letter of resignation, to Clyde. She didn't like the idea of making a father believe his son was dead. It was cold and cruel, but it was the only thing she could think of to ensure the little boy's safety. No one would bother looking for a dead kid, not Doyle's enemies and not Doyle – or rather anyone still working for Doyle.

Emily's expression turned serious, any trace of her earlier amusement gone. She made eye contact with Louise. "You have everything you need?"

"I have it right here," the other woman said, clutching the envelope Emily had given her with a forged passport and money.

Louise had no qualms about going along with Emily's plan to protect the boy. The housekeeper had practically raised Declan and was the closest thing the boy had to a mother. Emily was confident the other woman would take good care of the little boy.

"And you know how to get in touch with me if there are _any_ problems?" Emily asked her.

Louise rattled off the phone number Emily had given her from memory in response.

"Okay, then I should go. Declan, honey? I have to go now. Can I have a hug goodbye?"

Emily braced herself for impact as the little boy barreled into her, throwing his arms around her legs. She smiled down at the top of the boy's head sadly and brushed a hand through his mop of blonde curls, careful not to get any of the red sticky substance on his forehead in his hair. She found herself wondering idly if her baby would have blonde hair like its brother or dark hair like her, but quickly dismissed it as a ridiculous question when she hadn't even decided whether she was going to keep the baby - that was the one part of her plan she hadn't quite worked out. She didn't know if she could protect her child and she needed to know the baby would be safe before she could even think about keeping it.

Emily was surprised by the surge of protective love she already felt for her unborn baby - just an embryo now, not a real, live child like the boy in front of her. It wasn't surprising that she felt protective of Declan. She'd been able to act more like herself when she was playing with the son than ever could when she was with the father. She always had to be 'on' with Ian Doyle. She had to be Lauren Reynolds twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If she made one wrong move or said the wrong thing, it would be a fatal mistake. The only time she didn't have to act and think like an arms dealer was when she was spending time with Declan. She likened it to finding a kid who spoke English when she was the new kid in a country where she hadn't learned the language yet - it gave her a break from thinking before every word she spoke. Emily Prentiss definitely had a soft spot in her heart for Ian's son.

Emily pulled back from the little boy reluctantly and nudged him gently toward Louise. She met the other woman's gaze and held it. "Take care of him."

* * *

Her resignation was the next part of her plan. Emily knew it would be better for everyone involved if there was no record of this pregnancy in Emily Prentiss' medical records or personnel records.

Emily had a brand new passport and ID courtesy of the same forger she procured Louise's passport from. Whatever she decided to do, it would be under an assumed name.

Now, she just needed Clyde Easter to let her go, something that would be easier said than done. Emily stood across from him in his office, trying not to look nervous, as he read her letter of resignation.

Clyde glanced at her. "You're leaving me for the FBI, aren't you? That Agent Hotchner you're always going on about?"

"Oh, I do _not_ go on about Hotchner," Emily protested, her cheeks coloring with embarrassment and indignation. She had mentioned that she wanted to be a profiler with the FBI's BAU and that Aaron Hotchner was in charge of their 'A-team,' but that was it. She was regretting ever sharing her career goals with the team lead in that moment.

"You're awfully defensive, Prentiss," Clyde said, smirking slightly.

Emily rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me you're jealous, Clyde."

"You _are_ leaving me for another man," Clyde said, feigning hurt.

"Stop it," Emily said, laughing at his dramatics. "I'm not going to the FBI. Not yet anyway. I'm taking some time for myself."

Clyde looked surprised. "If it's time you want, all you had to do is ask."

"Thank you, but I'm not talking about a week's vacation here," Emily said, shaking her head. She might be talking about nine months…maybe more, maybe less.

Clyde locked eyes with her. "How long?"

"I don't know. I've been under for two years. _Two years_, Clyde. I just – I need some time," Emily explained, trying to stick to the truth as much as possible. Clyde Easter was no slouch when it came to profiling. He would know if she told him an outright lie.

Clyde hesitated slightly, trying to decide whether or not to say what was on his mind. "Time to get over Doyle?"

Emily stiffened, straightening her spine. Her expression hardened into a glacial stare. "What are you implying?"

Clyde looked at her wearily. "You didn't tell us about the boy until now, Emily."

"He's just a child," Emily said unapologetically. He'd had none of the same misgivings she had about using the photographs of Declan to break Doyle. She couldn't help but wonder if the man would have handed over the actual child as easily as he'd handed over the pictures. She would not apologize for protecting Ian's son. She glared heatedly at Clyde with fire in her eyes that practically dared him to argue.

"Ian Doyle's child," Clyde muttered gruffly. He couldn't help but wonder if she left that little detail out solely to protect the boy or if some misguided part of her was trying to protect the boy's father. Either way, he didn't like one of his agents leaving vital information out of her reports. "I wouldn't expect a thank you from Doyle if I were you."

"And here I thought he'd send flowers from prison," Emily said flippantly, not missing a beat.

"He'd sooner put a bullet through your head," Clyde said grimly.

"It's a good thing Lauren Reynolds is already dead then," Emily retorted, trying to appear unaffected by the idea of Ian killing her when in reality it was deeply unsettling.

Clyde raised his eyebrows, focusing on what she hadn't said. "And a good thing the bastard's in prison." His eyes drilled into hers as he waited expectantly for her to agree.

Emily's poker face faltered for a fraction of a second, but Clyde saw it. She had mixed feelings about sending Doyle to prison. She knew better than anyone what he was capable of, but he was also capable of love and she'd seen that side of him far more than she'd seen the ruthless killer over the course of the last two years. She felt something for him – something more than a government agent should feel for an international criminal – but she didn't know if she would call it love. She didn't know what she'd call it, just that her feelings for Ian scared her.

Clyde's eyes widened slightly at her inability to maintain her legendary poker face, a mistake Emily Prentiss would never make under normal circumstances. He shook his head, hardly able to believe what he was seeing. "Don't feel guilty for doing your job. And doing it well, might I add," he said, trying to soothe ruffled feathers.

"I hope that means I can count on you for a letter of recommendation," Emily said with confidence she no longer felt. At the end of the day she _had_ done her job, but she had withheld information on Declan and now it sounded like Clyde was questioning her objectivity when it came to Ian Doyle.

Clyde chuckled. Only Emily Prentiss would have the - for lack of a better word - _balls_ to ask for a letter of recommendation after the conversation they'd just had. He knew he liked her for a reason. "I'll write you a glowing letter of recommendation. Should I make it out to Agent Hotchner?"

He was ribbing her again, but Emily would prefer that to Clyde questioning her feelings for Doyle any day. "Not yet. I'm serious about taking some time off."

"If that's what you want," Clyde acquiesced reluctantly.

It wasn't what she _wanted_. But she knew what she had to do if she wanted to avoid her baby being forever associated with Ian Doyle by the very same people who had wasted no time in using Doyle's son against him.

Emily Prentiss promised herself right then and there that she would die before she let either of Doyle's children pay for the sins of their father.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Thanks for reading and for anyone who reviewed the first chapter! This is set during Season 14x08 Ashley and there are spoilers for the case.

**Chapter 1**

_November 2018_

Emily watched with wide eyes as Becky Hughes looked at the image of the happy, smiling little girl on the TV screen and promptly broke down crying.

Becky was visibly shaken and tearful when her ex-boyfriend and former-fiance, Jordan Halloran, was holding her at gunpoint, but she held it together remarkably well until the pictures and video clips of the daughter she'd given up for adoption started playing on TV. That was when her tears really intensified.

She hadn't really been able to focus on the TV with everything else going on in her living room, but once the eight year old girl Jordan had kidnapped as a substitute for Ashley was out of the house and Simmons had led Jordan out of the house in handcuffs, Becky really looked at the TV for the first time.

Emily followed the younger woman's shocked gaze to the TV screen where Ashley was playing with a hula hoop in her backyard. The little girl let the hula hoop fall to the ground and smiled big for the camera, waving at whoever was taking the home video.

Ashley's biological mother gasped and doubled over, crying like her heart was breaking for the daughter she had never really known and would only ever know from these pictures and video clips. Emily's heart went out to the other woman.

It wasn't the first case the BAU had where adoption had been one of the stressors, not by a long shot, but Emily felt she could relate more to Becky Hughes than she had to any of the others over the years.

Emily was drawing uncomfortable parallels to her past. Ian Doyle made Jordan Halloran look like a kitten, but both she and Becky gave their baby girls up for adoption to protect them because of who the fathers were. The realization that, at least in Ashley's case, it hadn't been enough to save the girl made Emily wonder if her own daughter was okay.

The BAU hadn't profiled Becky Hughes, but from her behavior so far, Emily thought the other woman might have locked the emotional turmoil of giving her daughter up in a box in the back of her mind much like Emily had. That box was wide open now, and all the emotions Becky had never allowed herself to feel were spilling over the surface as she broke down completely.

"Becky?" Emily questioned, trying to get the younger woman's attention off the TV since seeing the little girl seemed like it was too much for her.

Becky turned away from the TV when she heard her name and realized the Plymouth P.D. officer was waiting to escort her out of the house that was now a crime scene. She let the officer guide her out.

Emily started for the door, too, but Rossi's voice stopped her.

"Hey, Emily, you okay?"

"I'm fine," Emily said automatically.

Rossi scoffed slightly. "You and I both know you don't know the meaning of the word."

"I'm _fine_," Emily snapped. She was barely in control of her emotions and didn't trust herself to talk without having her own breakdown on the same scale as what they'd just witnessed from Becky Hughes. She needed time to force fourteen years' worth of repressed feelings back into the box they'd been safely locked away in for her daughter's whole life. There was a newfound worry added to the mixture of pain and regret thanks to this case and what had happened to Ashley. The box couldn't quite contain her overwhelming worry.

The warning tone her voice had taken would have been enough for anyone else on the team to leave it – and her - alone, but not David Rossi. "You know, if you don't want to tell me what's bothering you, that's fine, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't bite my head off," he said mildly.

Emily glanced at him, her eyes filling with regret when she met his concerned gaze. "I'm sorry, Dave."

"Apology accepted. Completely unnecessary though," he told her warmly. He was never angry or even annoyed with her. He was just hurt that her walls were up and keeping him out when all he wanted was to be there for her, whatever she was going through. "You, uh, sure there's nothing you want to talk about?"

"This case…it hit close to home," Emily said with a faraway look on her face, knowing she had to give him something.

Rossi raised his eyebrows in disbelief. Was that really all she was going to give him? "Thank you, Captain Obvious," he said, ignoring the baleful glare he received from Emily. "Come on, you're really not going to tell me why? I'm all in here."

Emily hesitated, trying to figure out where to start and how much to divulge. She had never told anyone about this chapter of her past, and the words to explain weren't coming to her easily. But if she were going to tell anyone her best-kept secret, it would be David Rossi. She knew from past experience that he would listen without judgment or recrimination. She didn't think there was anything she could say that would change his opinion of her. He'd been unwavering in his loyalty to her and always seemed to be in her corner.

"There was another undercover agent assigned to infiltrate Ian Doyle's organization before me," Emily began in a resigned tone. "A man. Doyle made him before he got anything."

"Doyle killed him?" Rossi questioned.

"Not personally," Emily answered. "But yeah. That's when they sent me in."

"Must've been scary," Rossi offered, knowing it would have been tough for Emily – for any agent really - to go under on the heels of another agent's cover being blown. She would have been in her mid-twenties, presumably one of the younger agents on the team, and desperate to prove herself as worthy that early in her career. He knew she wouldn't have said no to the assignment even if she wanted to.

"I was chosen for a reason. I was Doyle's type. It was another way in – the _only_ other way in," Emily explained.

Rossi already knew the nature of Emily's relationship with Doyle, and unlike a few of the other members of the BAU team, had never once judged her for it. He'd even defended her when Derek Morgan had been a little too quick to rush to judgment. He nodded in understanding. "Doyle would have been suspicious of any new business contacts."

"My cover was an arms dealer, but I never asked him about his business," Emily said, shaking her head. "I kept things personal to avoid suspicion."

"Whatever you did, it worked," Rossi acknowledged in an impressed tone.

"I was able to earn his trust, but it took me almost two years to get everything we needed. For most of that time, I was living with him in his house." Emily lowered her gaze to the floor and continued hesitantly. "I was, uh, on the pill. I'd been on the pill since I was fifteen." She laughed humorlessly and shook her head, mentally cursing her luck. She'd had two unplanned pregnancies in the space of twelve years. That must be some kind of a record – and not the kind she wanted to set. She wasn't exactly proud. She needed him to know she hadn't been stupid and careless.

"You got pregnant anyway. Doyle was the father?" Rossi prompted gently, seeing where this was going. It would have been a terrible position for an undercover agent to be in.

"He didn't know. I…never told him."

"Unless…" Rossi's eyes narrowed in suspicion as details of Ian Doyle's profile came back to him and something niggled in the back of his mind. "Have you ever considered the possibility that you getting pregnant was no accident?"

Emily stared at him with an incredulous expression. She was on the pill. Of course it was an accident.

Rossi held his hands out in front of him to stave off her protests. "Hear me out here. We know Doyle was highly controlling. He gave you an engagement ring. He wanted you to raise his son."

"Yeah, and I said no," Emily told him.

"That's just it though. A man like Doyle…he wouldn't take no for an answer. If you said no…well, some women get pregnant to trap unsuspecting men into marriage. What if with Doyle it was the other way around? Maybe he thought you'd marry him and be Declan's new mother if he got you pregnant," Rossi mused. "It could have been his way of trying to control you, or at least the situation."

Emily sucked in her breath. Doyle gave her his ring even though she told him she wasn't the marrying type and brought up having kids with her repeatedly. She knew he loved her when she was Lauren, but that didn't mean he wouldn't have done something underhanded to get what he wanted from her. It fit the profile.

"But I was on the pill."

Short of substituting her pills for placebos without her knowing, what could Doyle really have done to sabotage her birth control? Emily had always just assumed she missed a pill.

"What, and he couldn't have tampered with them somehow?" Rossi questioned, remembering the victims of Doyle's that had died from what appeared to be natural causes when there was nothing natural about it. He didn't think it was such a stretch for the guy to slip Emily something that would render her birth control pills completely ineffective.

"I suppose it's possible," Emily said doubtfully. "But it's more likely I missed a pill."

Rossi could tell she was beating herself up and tried to gloss over it. "However it happened, the fact remains that you were pregnant with Doyle's kid. I'm guessing you gave the kid up for adoption?"

Emily trusted David Rossi with her life _and_ her daughter's life, but she still didn't trust herself to talk about the baby girl she gave up for adoption. Her emotions were too raw. This was the most painful part of her past. She swallowed a lump in the back of her throat, hoping she would make it through the rest of the story without crying.

"I wouldn't let my daughter be a pawn. When she was born, they were still interrogating Doyle. They used the pictures of Declan, and I was afraid – I was afraid they'd use her, too," Emily said, her voice cracking with emotion.

Rossi sighed as he thought about how much grief this one undercover assignment had caused Emily Prentiss. The ghosts from her past continued to haunt her. He put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze.

Emily took a shuddered breath, trying to regain her composure. "Giving her up probably saved her life. If she were with me, Doyle _would_ have gone after her when he escaped from prison seven years ago. If he even suspected she were his, he would have taken her from me. If not, he would have put a bullet through her head as revenge for what he thought I did to Declan."

Emily thought of the families Doyle had annihilated in revenge and of the Cosenza boy in particular. Samuel Cosenza was shot execution-style with a single bullet through his head, which was exactly how Doyle believed Declan died. She understood the message the moment she laid eyes on the fatal gunshot wound in the middle of the boy's forehead – a message meant for her. She felt almost as guilty for her role in the innocent child's death as she would have if she'd been the one to pull the trigger. She could live with that guilt, but she would never have been able to live with it if it had been her daughter lying dead on the ground, killed in cold-blood by her own father. That would have destroyed Emily.

"But he didn't. And he'll never be able to hurt you again. Your daughter's safe, Emily. And so is Declan. Because of you," Rossi told her, looking straight into her eyes so she would see he really meant it. Emily had made some tough calls for those kids – calls that just might have saved their lives, but that also had some far-reaching consequences. He knew she was feeling the full weight of those consequences now and wanted nothing more than to take some of the load off.

In his not-so-humble opinion, Emily was the only reason Declan was still alive and kicking. She saved him from the unwanted - and potentially deadly - attention of the North Koreans, and then she saved him from his own mother who'd teamed up with one of his father's rivals. That kid may have lost the parent lottery, but Declan was one lucky kid to have Emily Prentiss looking out for him.

They didn't know that Emily _wouldn't_ have been able to protect her daughter, but Rossi understood she wasn't willing to take any chances. If there were even the slightest chance the kid would be in danger, Emily wouldn't have been able to justify keeping her.

"Safe, yes. But what about healthy?" Emily asked anxiously as she thought about Ashley. Becky Hughes' daughter had been safe, but that didn't mean she was healthy.

Rossi's expression softened. "That's what's really bothering you, isn't it? Do you know her name? Where she lives? Anything Penelope could use to put your mind at ease?"

"Her parents' – her, uh, adoptive parents' - names," Emily said, realizing how awkward it felt to refer to anyone else as her daughter's parents.

"Friends of yours?" Rossi inquired.

Emily shook her head. "There was no one I could trust with her. I picked her parents from the files the adoption agency gave me. I only met them once."

She spent hours poring over the files the adoption agency gave her on prospective parents. She debated with herself over whether she should meet them in person, not wanting to leave a trail that would lead straight to her child if anyone were ever looking for the kid Emily Prentiss gave up. In the end, she felt like she had to meet them. She met them under an assumed name, but it had still been a calculated risk to let them see her face. If anyone were to ask questions about her daughter's biological mother, they would be able to describe her. But she thought she'd covered her tracks well enough that no one would ever get close to the truth of her child's parentage.

Emily took an instant liking to Sarah and Steve Johnson. It helped that they were the complete and total opposite of Emily's parents. They had good jobs, but didn't put their careers first the way Emily's mother always had. Family came first for them, and they'd been trying to start a family of their own for years, but the prospective mother had been unable to get pregnant. They answered all her questions about their backgrounds and how they would raise her daughter honestly. They were warm and open with affection, holding hands as they sat across the table from her in the conference room at the adoption agency and even hugging Emily goodbye.

"Did you profile them?" Rossi teased with a small grin, trying to lighten the mood a little.

The hint of a smile played on Emily's lips – the first he'd seen since they started talking.

"That's a yes," Rossi murmured knowingly.

"I wasn't going to give my baby to just anyone," Emily told him.

"She's, what, fourteen or fifteen now?" Rossi asked.

"Fourteen."

Rossi smiled fondly as a mental image of a teenage version of Emily popped into his head. "I bet the boys are lining up around the block. I almost feel sorry for her old man."

"Hey, I thought you were trying to help here!" Emily shot him a mock-glare, not wanting to imagine the girl she still thought of as a baby with teenage boys.

Rossi chuckled softly. "Sorry. You know, I have to admit, as much as I wish I'd known about Joy sooner, it's probably a good thing I missed her teenage years. If it were up to me, I wouldn't have let her date until she was thirty."

Emily glanced at him sideways. "Knowing Joy, I'm not sure she would have asked for permission."

"Probably not," Rossi admitted good-naturedly. "But she would have had a hell of a time sneaking around on my watch."

Emily laughed a little at the idea of a teenage Joy trying to lie to one of the original founders of the BAU about where she was going and what she was doing. "How's everything going with her anyway?"

"Good," Rossi answered. "If you're asking if you can have a good relationship with your kid this late in the game, the answer is yes. That _is_ what you're really asking, isn't it?"

Emily smiled sheepishly in response. She didn't realize she was being that transparent.

"I'm not saying it will be easy or instantaneous. But it will be worth it. At least it has been for me. Talk to Penelope," Rossi said in an encouraging tone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 2**

Thanksgiving was hard. Holidays always were and it had only been a matter of days since the BAU arrested Jordan Halloran, which didn't give Emily enough time to process the thoughts and emotions the case brought up for her. Her daughter was still top of mind when she attended the Thanksgiving dinner Rossi hosted for the team and their respective families.

She always enjoyed spending time with her BAU family outside of work, and the team's Thanksgiving was certainly preferable to the alternative of spending the holiday alone - or worse, with her parents. But at the end of the night, Emily would be going home alone. She wasn't the only one on the team who was single, but sometimes it felt like she was the only one who was completely and utterly alone. It was a feeling Emily Prentiss was no stranger to.

Growing up as the only child of two distant parents, she'd been left to her own devices from the time she didn't need a nanny anymore until the time she left for college. Her parents were away or at important events far more than they were at home with her. It had always been the nanny or the car service or the housekeeper taking care of her – and they moved around enough that she never really built a close bond with any of her various caretakers. She'd had everything she ever wanted growing up, but none of the attention she'd been so desperate for. Throwing money at her had not bought her love. It had only bred bitter resentment.

The way she grew up Emily didn't really know what it was to have family. The sad reality was that the closest she'd ever come to a normal family dynamic had been when she was playing house with Ian Doyle. She knew an undercover operative, a world-renowned arms dealer, and a little boy who everyone thought belonged to the housekeeper did not constitute a conventional family. But at the same time, she probably had more family dinners in the two years she was living in Doyle's house than she'd had in seventeen years in her parents' house. It was hard to feel alone when she was never alone in Doyle's house. It was, however, a different kind of loneliness when no one in the house could know who she really was.

When the undercover assignment ended, Emily knew she wanted that – the family dinners, the child running through the house, the house that she would never be left alone in – but as Emily Prentiss, not Lauren Reynolds.

Emily wanted to build the family she'd never had but always desperately wanted. She assumed she would eventually meet someone, get married, and have kids – kids she could keep without the constant worry that they would be in danger because of who they were, or rather who their father was. But that had never happened and now it was too late. Emily was in her forties and still single. She knew it was likely the only child she would ever have was the one she'd given up.

The job made relationships hard - not that relationships were ever easy. But the unpredictable schedule and the constant travel were especially hard. Hotch's marriage hadn't survived it, and neither had any of Rossi's. Somehow JJ made it work. So had Matt Simmons, for that matter. It was possible to make it work, but it wasn't easy.

It wasn't even just the job. Part of it was Emily. It was hard for her to get close to anyone and even harder for her to really trust anyone – anyone except her team, that is. They had become her family.

Emily hoped they wouldn't see through her I'm-fine façade the way Rossi had. He was still the only one she'd told about her daughter, and she wasn't ready to discuss it with anyone else. With any luck, the excitement of the long holiday weekend would distract the other profilers from…well, profiling her. She took a deep breath and knocked. The door opened to Rossi, beaming happily at her.

"Wine and pie?" Rossi said as he took the proffered bottle and pie box from Emily. "Store bought I presume?"

"Ooh! Wine and pie! Two of my favorite things!" Penelope exclaimed from behind him.

"Mine, too," Emily agreed. She turned to Rossi with a mock glare. "You know, I _can_ actually cook."

She knew cooking wasn't exactly her strong suit. Her mother never taught her to cook – not that Elizabeth Prentiss ever actually cooked. Since any big dinners or parties the Prentiss' had were to entertain foreign dignitaries, they were always catered affairs. Emily ate dorm food and free food from the restaurant where she waited tables while she was in college. After college she had jobs where she was always traveling and it just didn't make sense to stock her fridge with food that would just go bad anyway. She lived off take out, but there were a few things she knew how to make on the rare occasion the team was out of rotation and she actually had the time and inclination to cook. She thought she could manage helping Rossi in the kitchen.

"Last time we let you in the kitchen on Thanksgiving you burned the turkey," Rossi reminded her.

"That was one time," Emily said defensively.

"Only because we haven't let you anywhere near the kitchen since," Rossi said with a soft chuckle. "You can watch football with JJ and Spencer. Just stay out of my kitchen."

"But the kitchen is where the wine is," Emily protested.

"I'll have someone who _won't_ burn my kitchen down bring you a glass," Rossi told her.

Emily found JJ's whole family along with Reid in Rossi's living room. Reid was sitting on the floor with the boys doing a card trick they both appeared completely transfixed by while JJ watched from the couch with an amused smile. Will was engrossed in the football game on TV.

"Can I watch, too, or is this magic show invitation only?" Emily asked, making her presence known.

"Aunt Emily!" Henry jumped up to give her a hug. "Thank you for the video games," he said, referring to the birthday gift she'd given JJ for his birthday earlier that month. She'd gotten him the video games he wanted for the new Nintendo Switch JJ and Will were giving him.

"You are very welcome," Emily told him, giving him a squeeze. With a hand on the ten year old's shoulder, Emily gently steered him back over to their resident magician. She sat down between Henry and Michael in a little circle facing Reid and offered her colleague a grin. "Sorry to interrupt your act."

Reid told Michael to pick a card. The three year old put a lot of thought into it, studying the cards splayed out in front of him carefully before finally choosing one.

They made it through Reid's entire repertoire of card tricks and started a game of Go Fish, but called it quits mid-game when Rossi announced that dinner was served.

They had quite a spread. In addition to the traditional turkey, mashed potatoes, veggies, and rolls, they also had lasagna as a nod to Rossi's Italian heritage.

"Where's everyone else?" Krystall asked, noticing that there was one additional place set at the table and they were missing a few of the team members she'd been introduced to.

"Tara's having dinner with her dad and her brother. She'll be joining us later for dessert," Rossi said, explaining the extra place setting at the table. "Matt and Kristy have her entire family in town so they're out. And Luke is introducing Lisa to his parents. To be young and in love."

"What about the rest of you?" Krystall asked with a friendly smile. "Does anyone have anything fun planned for the long weekend?"

"I'm going to visit my mom. I'm actually leaving early to catch a flight. The TSA predicted that this Thanksgiving will be the busiest on record. There will be an estimated 30.6 million people traveling by air. Only 1.73 million are traveling today. It's actually the lightest travel day," Reid said, rattling off statistics a mile a minute.

JJ caught Emily's eye and they exchanged amused smiles at Reid's long-winded response to Krystall's attempt at small talk. For her part, Krystall looked a little dazed by the information overload, and he wasn't even done yet.

"With higher than normal wait times due to the increased passenger volume, I still need to get to the airport at least two hours early to get through security. I'm flying out of Dulles because it has approximately 320,000 less passengers for the month of November than BWI does," Reid continued in earnest.

JJ had been waiting patiently for Reid to finish rattling off travel statistics, but took pity on Rossi's fiancé and jumped in, knowing Reid would keep going if they let him. "Good luck with that, Spence. Now I'm kind of glad we're not going anywhere. My mom's in Pennsylvania, and Will's family is in New Orleans, but we decided to stay here since we only have today and tomorrow off."

Emily felt Krystall's warm gaze shift to her and glanced up from her plate. "Oh, uh, my parents are in Europe." She didn't tell the other woman that she wouldn't have spent Thanksgiving with them even if they were in D.C., but the team knew she always spent holidays with her BAU family and not the family she was born into.

"Emily's parents are ambassadors," Rossi added in explanation, hoping to bring an end to any further questioning before it began. Emily looked melancholy enough as it was. There was no need to delve further into her relationship – or lack thereof – with her chronically absentee parents.

Unfortunately, that piqued Krystall's interest. She looked at Rossi speculatively. "Wasn't your ex-wife an ambassador?"

"Hayden," Rossi supplied. "Joy's mother."

"Oh, yeah. Which ex-wife was she again?" Emily asked with a sly grin.

"What, because there are so many to choose from?" Rossi said dryly. "She was the second Mrs. David Rossi. Krystall was the third."

"Third time's the charm," Penelope said with a wide smile.

Emily was relieved when conversation shifted away from family and holiday plans to wedding plans. Penelope wanted to know every little detail of the wedding plans, and Krystall was happy to oblige her.

Bored with wedding talk, Henry asked JJ to be excused when he'd finished about half the food on his plate. JJ started to get up even though she hadn't finished her own food yet, but Emily put a hand on her arm to stop her. "Let me."

Emily picked up the boy's plate and her own plate, scanning the table to see if anyone else was done eating. She added Reid's empty plate to the stack and paused to give Rossi a wry look. "I assume I'm allowed in the kitchen now that the turkey made it out unscathed?"

"I don't know," Rossi murmured with a contemplative expression. "There's a lot of dessert in there that you could ruin."

Michael's eyes widened and he gasped in horror from Will's lap. The three year old looked up at his father with a pleading expression, whispering none-too-quietly for Will not to let Aunt Em near the "pump kin" pie because it was his favorite. Everyone laughed gently – even Emily, though she balanced it out with the pointed glare she aimed at Rossi.

"Just for that, I really may ruin a pie...by throwing it in your face," Emily told Rossi as she walked past him to get to the kitchen.

Emily rinsed off the plates and loaded the dishwasher. Instead of rejoining the team in the dining room, she found the only one who hadn't laughed at her, or rather her limited cooking skills – Henry – in the family room, sitting on the couch playing Mario Kart on his new Nintendo Switch.

"Can I play?" Emily asked, sitting next to him.

He stopped his game and handed her the second controller, explaining what the buttons did before starting a new game. As it turned out, Emily was only a little better at Mario Kart than she was in the kitchen – which wasn't great. In other words, she got her ass handed to her by the ten year old.

It was a little bittersweet playing with JJ's sons when thoughts of her daughter lurked in every corner of her mind. Emily wondered what her daughter had been like at their ages and if the fourteen year old liked Mario Kart or if she was too old for videogames.

* * *

Later that night when Emily was home, she opened her laptop and stared at the open Google Chrome browser, long fingers hovering over the keyboard as she fought her thoughts and emotions.

Maybe it was the time of year or the half bottle of wine she'd had at Rossi's that made her type the names of her daughter's adoptive parents in the search window. She was no Penelope Garcia, but Emily could Google stalk with the best of them. After a cursory glance at the search results, she added Bethesda, MD to narrow it down further.

Of all the places she could have gone to hide during her pregnancy, Emily picked Bethesda, Maryland. She spent a few months in Reston, Virginia first, renting a house in the same cul-de-sac where Declan was living with Louise.

There'd been questions about the boy in the staged pictures, and not just from Clyde. It didn't look good that she hadn't mentioned Declan in any of her reports and then had suddenly produced the photographs of him as the key to getting Ian Doyle to talk. No one had questioned whether the boy was really dead, but Emily knew they still could – and if they did, Declan would be in danger.

Emily stayed close to Declan until she was almost five months pregnant and couldn't quite button her pants anymore. That was when she called in reinforcements in the form of her friend, Tom Koehler.

It was hard for Emily Prentiss to trust anyone, but she knew she couldn't protect Declan _and_ her unborn child - at least not alone. She was only one person.

She didn't tell Tom about her baby. It was enough that she was trusting him with Declan. She wasn't going to put two eggs in the same proverbial basket.

Emily left Reston while she could still hide her growing belly under loose-fitting shirts and jackets, but she didn't go far. She crossed state lines, renting a house in Bethesda under a new alias.

It was far enough out of the way that she wouldn't cross paths with anyone, but close enough that she could get back to Declan if anything happened. At least that's what she told herself at the time.

Looking back on it now, Emily thought there might have been a little more to it than just sticking close to Declan. She'd moved around a lot, never staying in one place for more than two years, certainly not long enough for anyplace to really feel like home. D.C. may not have been home –not then anyway – but it was where she'd spent the most time growing up. When her parents' ambassador assignments ended, they always inevitably ended up back in Washington. It was where she graduated from high school and she had more friends and connections there than everywhere else she'd lived combined. In hindsight, that should have made it the very last place she went to hide, but she'd been scared and hadn't wanted to stray too far from her comfort zone.

At that point Emily still hadn't been sure what she was going to do. It was a phone call to Tsia from a burner phone when she was almost eight months pregnant that made her decision for her. Tsia told her Doyle was _still _being interrogated. Would it ever end? At what point would it be enough? Apparently not before the baby was born. It was only then that she resigned herself to giving the baby up.

Emily briefly considered choosing a friend – someone like Tom Koehler – to raise her baby as their own, but the few people she would trust all had some kind of connection to the Intelligence community. And she didn't want her kid to have _any_ connection to that life – _her_ life, her work for the taskforce. No, she wanted a clean break for the sake of her child if not for her own sake.

Emily had no idea if the couple she'd ultimately chosen to raise her child still lived in Maryland, but she figured it was as good a place to start as any. With the city added to the search criteria, she bit her bottom lip as she pressed enter. So much for a clean break.

The first result that popped up made Emily's heart drop to her stomach. She clicked on the blue link apprehensively, hoping against hope that the obituary was for a different Sarah Johnson. It _was_ a common name.

There was a picture of a woman with shoulder-length auburn hair, creamy white skin, and a warm smile staring back at Emily from the top of the page. She'd only met the other woman once, but Emily would never forget the face of the woman she chose to raise her daughter. It was definitely her in the picture.

Emily closed her eyes and let out the breath she'd been holding. She didn't think she wanted to know what happened to the kindhearted woman, but she knew she _needed_ to know. What if her daughter had been with Sarah? She opened her eyes reluctantly and forced herself to read.

_Sarah Rose Johnson_

_1972 - 2016_

_JOHNSON, Sarah Rose _

_Sarah Rose (Smith) Johnson of Bethesda, Maryland passed away on May 26, 2016 at the age of 43 after a long battle with breast cancer. She was born on August 7, 1972 in Naperville, Illinois. She graduated from Naperville Central High School in 1991 with Honors. In 1995, she graduated from University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. She worked as a nurse at Bethesda General Hospital before taking on her favorite job of being a stay-at-home mom to her daughter, Hannah Rose. Sarah loved spending time with her family and was an avid supporter of Hannah's volleyball team. She is survived by her husband of 18 years, Steve Johnson, and her daughter, Hannah Rose of Bethesda, Maryland; her mother, Carole Smith of Naperville, Illinois; and other loving family and friends. She was preceded in death by her father, Peter G Smith. A funeral service will be held at 2:00 pm, Tuesday May 31, 2016 at St. Michael Catholic Church. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Sarah's honor to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. _

Emily's eyes filled with tears. She didn't know who she felt worse for - the dead woman or her daughter who was still a child and had lost the only mother she'd ever known.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Thanks for reading and for anyone who reviewed the last chapter. This chapter is Prentiss / Hotch centric. I'll be interested to see thoughts on the way I brought him into this and their interaction. I tried to keep them both in character.

To the reviewer who asked about Mendoza, I'm thinking about bringing him into this, but he wouldn't be end game for Emily. I enjoyed their date on the show though and think it could be fun to include.

Please feel free to ask questions or tell me if there is anything you'd like to see. I have a lot of this planned out, but can always add in things if there's a relationship or story line you'd like to see and it makes sense with the story.

**Chapter 3**

It had been years since she'd last seen him, but it felt like yesterday. Emily had a certain level of comfort with Aaron Hotchner that had withstood her time 'dead,' her time in London, and now his time in the Witness Protection Program.

He'd been back in D.C. for a little over a year now, but had decided not to return to the BAU. Emily wasn't sure if he would agree to meet her, but he had, no questions asked.

She offered to meet somewhere by him, but he chose a coffee shop in the heart of Washington instead. He probably thought she needed a consult on a case, and he didn't want his new life with Jack to collide with his old life. She didn't want to tell him what she really wanted over the phone. It was a conversation she needed to have in person.

Emily saw him the second he walked through the door. He looked the same…a little more relaxed maybe, but otherwise the same old Hotch. He had foregone his usual suit and tie, but still wasn't exactly dressed casually. He was wearing a crisp white button-down shirt and perfectly pressed slacks.

Emily rose from her chair at the table she'd grabbed in the back corner and waved. She caught his eye and he offered her a small smile before making his way back to her.

"Hi," Emily said warmly, giving him a quick hug. "It's good to see you."

"It's been a long time," Hotch said in a neutral tone. He didn't know why they were there – Emily had never said. She'd been deliberately vague on the phone. He didn't want to get dragged into a BAU case, but he didn't know if he could say no if they needed his help.

Emily stopped herself from telling him it had been too long. The last thing she wanted to do was make him feel guilty. Hotch had never once made her feel guilty when she came back from the dead. Some of the others had, but not him. "It has," she agreed instead. "How have you been?"

"It's strange being back here after everything," Hotch answered honestly. "In D.C., I mean." He met her gaze and saw the understanding he expected to see in her eyes. No one could understand how hard it was to come back from Witness Protection the way Emily could. "But I don't need to tell you that. You know better than anyone."

Emily nodded, remembering how hard it had been to try to reclaim her old life after being legally dead. Hotch may not have been declared dead, but he had to leave everyone and everything behind just like she did. The people she'd left behind had been happy to have her back, but they couldn't just pick right back up where they left off. There was hurt and anger about how she left, even blame for leaving. It wouldn't surprise her if Haley's family harbored some resentment over how Hotch left. She offered him a sympathetic smile. "I'll bet Jack's glad to be back at least."

Hotch nodded. "He is. He missed Jessica and his grandparents."

"How's he doing?" Emily asked as she sat back down, wanting to continue the conversation over coffee, or in her case tea. She'd ordered for them both since she beat him there.

Hotch followed her lead, sitting down across from her. "He's doing well. He was one of three freshmen to make Varsity Soccer."

"Oh, Hotch, that's great. I'm happy for him," Emily said with a beaming smile. "I took the liberty of ordering for you. I hope you still take your coffee black?"

Hotch lifted his coffee cup. "Thank you. But I didn't come just so you would buy me coffee. I hope you know that." He thought it went without saying that he would be there for her, whatever she needed. But then again maybe it didn't. He had consistently declined invitations to team dinners, feeling like it was inappropriate for him to be there when he was no longer a member of the team. At some point they stopped asking him. He hadn't really seen anyone from the team except Dave since he'd been back in Washington.

When he first went into the Witness Protection Program, Hotch planned to return to the BAU once Mr. Scratch was caught. But seeing how leaving his aunt, his grandparents, and his friends affected Jack, Hotch knew he couldn't go back to the job that had already cost his son so much – too much. He'd tried to maintain a safe distance from all things BAU. Unfortunately that had included the team itself.

"Oh, please, it's the least I can do to thank you for meeting me here. I'll even spring for a muffin if you're hungry," Emily told him.

"I can buy my own muffin, Prentiss – _Emily_," Hotch corrected himself, remembering that she wasn't his subordinate anymore. There was no need for formalities.

"Oh, are we on a first name basis now?" Emily teased. "It's about time. We've only known each other for, what, twelve years?"

Hotch's lips twitched in amusement. "Something like that. And this isn't work. Is it? Emily? Not that it isn't good to catch up, but why are we here?"

Emily chewed her bottom lip, hesitating slightly. "I really wish you'd let me buy you that muffin." She saw a quick flash of frustration in his eyes and sighed, knowing she couldn't stall any more. "You can consider it your retainer. I'm going to need attorney client privilege for this."

Hotch raised his eyebrows. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn't that. "You do know I'm not a practicing attorney, right?" Even though he had no business giving legal advice, he knew he couldn't leave it at that if Emily was in some kind of trouble. He also knew how hard it would have been for her to come to him with this. He would have to be careful not to scare here off. He placed his hand over hers on the table and waited for her to meet his gaze. "Should I be concerned?"

"I don't need a lawyer. I just…need some legal advice," Emily explained.

"If that was meant to be reassuring, it wasn't," Hotch told her. He glanced around the coffee shop and decided it wasn't the place for this conversation. There were too many prying eyes – and ears. "Maybe we should take our coffee to go."

Emily got up from her chair and put her black wool pea coat on. It was a nice day for late November, but it was still cool and there was a brisk breeze.

Hotch held the door open for her. She waited for him to join her on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop and then said, "There's a park a couple blocks over."

They fell into step next to each other, walking until the shops and restaurants ended and then winding their way through the park until they found a stone bench in an isolated area. Hotch waited for her to begin, but she just sat there staring straight ahead.

"Whatever it is, just tell me," Hotch said, breaking the tense silence. "I can't help you unless I know."

Emily thought it would be easier for her to do this. She'd already told Rossi about her daughter. What was one more person?

But it wasn't just another person – it was Hotch. She'd had to earn his respect when he had zero respect for her in the beginning. Now that she had it, Emily didn't want to lose his hard-earned respect. She knew that was just a risk she was going to take if she wanted his advice, and she did want his advice.

She knew she could go to another lawyer – _any_ other lawyer – but she hadn't just gone to Aaron Hotchner because he happened to have a law degree. She'd gone to him because he knew the inner workings of the FBI, and he would know if she would still have her badge if worse came to worse. She'd gone to him because he would know how important her career was to her, but he would also understand the need to be there for her child – or at least try to be.

"How bad would it be if it came out that I had signed legal documents under an assumed name?" Emily asked.

Hotch glanced at her reproachfully. "You know you're going to have to give me more than that. In the law, intent matters. I need context. To start with, what kind of documents are we talking about here?"

"Adoption papers," Emily told him reluctantly.

Hotch's eyes widened in shock. After all the time he'd spent profiling serial killers, there wasn't much that shocked him but this did. He thought of how good Emily was with kids – Jack, Henry, even victims. He'd lost count of how many of their younger victims had opened up to her over the years. Kids loved Emily Prentiss – and she had always seemed to love them. He just couldn't imagine her giving her own son or daughter up.

A dark thought occurred to him. She said she'd used an assumed name. He thought of the passports JJ had given Emily when they faked her death.

How long had Ian Doyle had Emily in that warehouse in Boston before the BAU found them? Doyle branded her – and not just anywhere, but on her chest, an area that was sexual in nature. He'd literally branded her, marking her as his property. With where the brand was, he would have had to take off her shirt. What if that wasn't all the bastard did to her? The thought made Hotch sick, but he had to ask.

"You said you used an assumed name. Was it after we faked your death?" Hotch questioned gently, trying to be tactful.

Emily blinked in surprise as she read between the lines of what he was really asking. Ian Doyle had tortured her, but he didn't rape her. "No," she said with a sigh. "But you're getting warm. You've got the father right, but the timeline's wrong. It was fourteen years ago."

Hotch nodded in understanding. It was when she was undercover.

He was a little surprised they didn't find out about this when she went after Doyle on her own and they were looking for her. Emily was their victim and Ian Doyle was their unsub, but somehow they'd missed the fact that there was a baby in their profile.

He marveled at her ability to keep a secret like this from not only the BAU, but Interpol as well. Every agency she had worked for would have had rigorous background checks that included polygraphs. It was really quite impressive that this had never come out. Hotch had to wonder why she would allow it to come out now after all this time.

"There's something I don't understand," Hotch said with a small frown. "If it's been fourteen years, why are you suddenly worried about this now?"

"My daughter's here in D.C. She lives with her adoptive father. Her adoptive mother died from breast cancer a year and a half ago," Emily said sadly.

Hotch saw the grief in Emily's eyes for a woman and child she didn't know. Knowing Emily, she was probably blaming herself for her daughter being without a mother now. It wasn't her fault, but she would blame herself anyway. It wouldn't have been the life she wanted for her daughter when she gave the baby up for adoption, but no amount of planning could stop life from happening. "I'm sorry," he offered sincerely.

"Can I ask you a question? It's personal," Emily warned him.

"You can ask. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll answer," Hotch replied cautiously.

"When you were with Beth, how'd Jack do with having a new mother figure in his life?" Emily asked.

She knew there was a big difference between a biological mother and a stepmother – or in Beth's case Hotch's longtime girlfriend. Hotch was never actually engaged to Beth, but they were together for three years and Emily knew the woman had been a big part of Jack's life at one time. She wanted to know if Jack ever resented Beth being there for him when Haley couldn't be.

Hotch gave her a long look as he thought about how to answer that. "That was a long time ago. He liked Beth. But you can't use Jack as a baseline for how your daughter may react," he said carefully. He looked down as guilt flooded him. He was the reason Jack lost his mother. Her death could have been prevented, but Hotch was too late to save her. "You have to remember Jack was only four when Haley died. Sometimes I wonder how much he remembers. I tell him about her, but that's different from having actual memories. He's confused memories of Jessica for memories of Haley before, incorrectly believing it was Haley in the memory."

Emily nodded. She knew she couldn't just waltz back into her daughter's life and fill the big gaping hole left by Sarah Johnson. Her daughter would have twelve years of memories of her adoptive mother and Emily would be a complete stranger.

What she didn't know was if her daughter would want any kind of mother figure for her teen years, even if that mother figure was Emily, or if any attempt Emily made to be there for her now would just confuse the girl.

"For what it's worth, I think she would be lucky to have you in her life," Hotch told her.

Emily offered him a half-hearted smile, knowing the only person whose opinion she cared about here – Hannah - might not agree. "I just want to talk to her adoptive father. Right now there's no way she would ever be able to find me even if she wanted to. I want her to have my name instead of an alias. I want her to have answers if she ever wants them. I want to be there for her if she'll let me."

"What she wants may not matter," Hotch advised her. "It will be up to her adoptive father. He is her legal guardian."

"I know," Emily acknowledged. "That's why I want to reach out to him. I met him once under an assumed name. He knows me as Grace Russell. That's the name I signed the adoption paperwork with. He's a lawyer – her father. I just want to know what I'm looking at here. I don't want to go in blind."

"Worst case you committed fraud by signing under a false name. It's a felony. But that's worst case," Hotch stressed. "There's the question of intent, and you didn't intend for the adoption to be any less legal. It wouldn't be hard to prove you were operating under duress given the situation. I would still feel better if you didn't talk to him alone though. If he's a lawyer, it would behoove you to have your own representation in case he makes threats or tries to intimidate you."

"I'm not easily intimidated," Emily said, trying to make light of it. The word felony scared her a little, but Hotch's calm demeanor led her to believe he wasn't worried for her. He would be worried if he really thought she'd be facing felony charges, right?

"If you insist on going alone, at least have an attorney on standby," Hotch suggested.

"Are you volunteering?" Emily asked.

"I told you I'm not a practicing attorney, but feel free to call me if you're in need of advice," Hotch offered. He knew she had a tendency to go it alone and hated the idea of her being alone if the adoptive father didn't react well. "I'd like to be kept apprised. I…need to know you're okay."

"You've certainly earned the muffin you wouldn't let me buy you," Emily told him, nudging his shoulder gently. "Can I buy you lunch instead? It's almost lunchtime already."

"I'd like that," Hotch agreed.

They walked back toward the coffee shop, knowing they would pass some restaurants on the way.

With the hard part over, conversation flowed easily as Emily gave him updates on how everyone on the team was doing. She was careful to keep it focused on their personal lives. She got the impression Hotch didn't want to blur the line he'd drawn in the sand between his life with Jack and his old job with the BAU.

They decided on a little café that had good salads and sandwiches and settled into a booth. They were on the subject of Rossi's upcoming wedding when the waitress brought their food over.

"This time the wedding's not gonna be at drive-thru wedding chapel although I wouldn't mind a trip to Vegas," Emily mused.

"You could use your winnings to pay for your wedding gift," Hotch suggested. "Rossi has expensive taste."

"Or lose our lunch money," Emily said with a self-deprecating laugh.

"I've seen your poker face," Hotch reminded her. "My money's on you."

Emily's cheeks flushed with the praise. Even if they were just messing around, talking about her poker skills, it was exceedingly rare for Hotch to give anyone a compliment and she knew he wouldn't have said it if he didn't mean it. "Yeah, well, it's too bad they're getting married in Washington this time. I'll just have to make do with beating Reid at poker," she said with a confident grin.

"How's he doing?" Hotch questioned. "I heard about what happened in Mexico."

"And they say what happens in Mexico stays in Mexico," Emily quipped. "He's good. He's visiting his mother this weekend. Her Alzheimer's is progressing. She's not doing well, but he has her in a great place."

Hotch noticed how she skipped over Reid's time in prison and frowned. "Emily, what you did, working tirelessly to clear his name – not everyone would do that."

"It wasn't just me," Emily said, deflecting. "It was a team effort."

"There's a reason I wanted you to take my place as Unit Chief when I left," Hotch told her, his gaze intense. "And not just because you're extremely capable, which you are. But you're not the only one on the team who is capable. No, I wanted you to take my place because out of everyone, you and I – I think we're the most alike. I knew you would run the team the same way I would."

They were both highly ambitious and career-driven, but they put the team first – at times even putting what was right for the team above their career ambitions within the FBI to their own detriment. It was how Aaron Hotchner got into Erin Strauss' bad books, and why Emily had attracted the unwanted attention of Linda Barnes. Both of them could hold their own under political pressure. There was no one he would have trusted more to lead the team in his stead.

Emily's lips curved into a half-smile. It wasn't a compliment exactly – he was simply comparing her to him, and he was human. Aaron Hotchner had a lot of great qualities she really admired in him, but he wasn't perfect – no one was. It was, however, the reassurance she needed that nothing she'd shared with him that day had taken away from the respect he still had for her.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** This one's on the longer side. If you bear with me for the first part that includes an OC (the adoptive father of Emily's AU daughter), there's some Hotch / Prentiss and then the whole team working on a case.

**Chapter 4**

It wasn't hard to find the name of the law firm where Steve Johnson worked as an attorney with a focus on Corporate Banking.

Emily had no idea how Steve would react to her showing up at his office like this. He could be angry, defensive, threaten her with legal action, or a hundred other scenarios Emily didn't even want too think about.

She was a good judge of character – she had to be in her line of work. She thought he was a good man or she never would have chosen him to raise her daughter. In their one meeting, he'd struck her as kind and compassionate. But that was over fourteen years ago. A lot could change in fourteen years.

Emily stood outside the high-rise building in downtown Washington that housed the legal offices of Steve's firm, leaning casually against the building with a takeaway coffee cup filled with tea in her hands. The herbal tea was doing little to calm her nerves as she waited for her daughter's adoptive father to arrive for the day. She was keeping an eye out for him so she saw him the moment he came into view.

Just like with Sarah, Steve's face was forever embedded in Emily's memory. He'd aged, as had Emily. His light golden brown hair was thinning, but there was no grey in it. Emily still recognized him immediately.

He would have walked right past Emily if she hadn't stepped into his path, forcing him to look at her. He wasn't looking for her – why would he be? He was just walking into the office on autopilot like he would any other Monday morning, not expecting a ghost from his past to show up randomly.

"Excuse me," he murmured politely as he glanced up, meeting her gaze with startled hazel eyes. He blinked in confusion. It took him a nanosecond, if that, to place her face. His mouth actually hung open as he stared at her in complete and utter shock, letting his leather briefcase fall to the sidewalk with a thud. In addition to the initial shock of seeing the biological mother of his only child completely out of left field after more than fourteen years, he couldn't quite get over how much Hannah looked like the woman who had given birth to her. "Grace? What are you – what are you doing here?"

"Can we talk?" Emily asked, shifting uncomfortably under his wide-eyed gaze.

The man nodded dumbly. He was still struggling to form coherent sentences as he tried to process this blast from the past. "Uh, yeah, we can, um, talk in my office," he mumbled as he picked his briefcase up from where he'd dropped it in surprise.

Emily followed him into the building. Once inside, they took the elevator to the top floor. Steve led the way past the receptionist's desk and into his office, stopping only to tell his assistant to hold his calls.

"Have a seat," he offered as he sat down behind the desk.

Emily took the indicated chair opposite him. "First of all, my name's not Grace. It's Emily," she started, reaching for her badge.

His brow furrowed in confusion and his eyes darted toward the door as he considered calling Security to escort her out of his office.

"I know that sounds crazy. If you'd just let me explain..." Emily looked at him with pleading eyes. "I promise you I can explain."

Steve was beginning to question the sanity of the woman in front of him. He opened his mouth to refuse her, but stopped when her eyes found his. His daughter had the exact same big round eyes that were so dark that the black pupil and brown iris were almost indistinguishable. How many times had his little girl looked at him with those pleading eyes? He closed his mouth again and nodded resignedly. "Go ahead."

"My name's Emily Prentiss," Emily said again, sliding her badge across the mahogany desk as proof of her identity. It would hold more weight than a driver's license or passport. She waited patiently as he inspected the badge carefully.

"You're FBI?" Steve inquired with wide eyes. The badge wasn't just proof she was who she said she was – it was also a symbol that inspired trust. Like most law-abiding citizens, he had an ingrained belief that law enforcement was there to serve and protect. It made him feel a lot more comfortable with the woman in his office, even if her status as Hannah's birth mother still made this situation awkward.

Emily nodded. "When I met you, I had been undercover for Interpol for two years. I was scared my baby would be in danger because of my undercover work. That's why I decided on adoption and why I used an alias."

Steve studied her with shrewd eyes, instantly worried. "Is my daughter in danger? Is that why you're here?"

Emily noticed the possessive language – my daughter – and swallowed as she shook her head. "No. Anyone who would have targeted her is dead now. I wouldn't be here otherwise. Her safety was always my top priority."

Steve exhaled sharply. "Why _are_ you here?"

"I wanted her – _you_," Emily amended, seeing the alarmed look on his face, "to have my real name in case she ever wants to find me. You wouldn't get anywhere with the alias I used fourteen years ago."

"She doesn't even know she's adopted. We were going to tell her together, but Sarah got sick – breast cancer," Steve muttered quietly, lowering his gaze to the desk as he fought the familiar feeling of grief that hit him every time the subject of his late wife came up.

"I'm sorry," Emily said sincerely.

"We almost told her she was adopted when Sarah got sick. It's genetic – the BRCA gene. If she were ours biologically, she would have a fifty percent chance of having the gene, and something like an eighty percent chance of getting breast cancer." Steve's face twisted into a bitter expression. "We didn't want her to worry about that, but I don't think she really understood that what Sarah had was hereditary. She was only ten. Sarah died right before her twelfth birthday."

"If it helps at all, there's no history of cancer on my side," Emily told him.

"It does," Steve acknowledged grudgingly. "We wondered about that."

"I can answer any questions you have," Emily offered.

"Thank you," he had the good grace to say. "It would…it would be good for us to know her medical history in case anything ever happens."

"Does that mean – are you going to tell her?" Emily asked hopefully, subconsciously leaning forward a little in her chair.

"I don't know," Steve said with a weary sigh, throwing his head back against the headrest on his desk chair. "I don't know. I wish Sarah were here for this. She would know what to do. She always knew what to do."

Steve closed his eyes as he thought of all the times he'd needed Sarah over the last few years – all the times she would have known exactly what to do with Hannah and he'd been in over his head as a newly single dad to a pre-teen and now teenage daughter.

There was a time recently when his strong, spirited daughter came home from school in tears and stubbornly refused to tell him what was wrong. Sarah would have known just what to say to her, but he had absolutely no idea what to do with a crying teenage girl who wouldn't talk to him – and not for lack of trying on his part. It was just one of a thousand times he'd needed Sarah and Hannah had needed her mom. He was trying so hard to be everything his daughter needed, but he questioned whether he was enough for her every day.

He remembered a conversation they'd had toward the end when they knew the chemo and radiation weren't working and there was nothing else the doctors could do. Sarah was going to die – it was just a matter of when. She had said she wanted him to move on, to find someone else, to be happy. He'd tried to stop her, not wanting his sick wife to think like that, but she kept going. She'd said through tears that if she couldn't be there for Hannah, she would want someone else to be there for their daughter. He knew she was thinking of a stepmother who would be there for their daughter if he were ever to remarry and wondered what her thoughts would be on Hannah's biological mother. He thought he knew. He knew one thing for sure - Sarah _hated_ the idea of Hannah growing up without a mother.

Feeling like he knew what Sarah would do if she were there, Steve opened his eyes again and met Emily's gaze. "Sarah liked you."

"I liked her," Emily responded easily. "I liked both of you. You wouldn't be raising my baby as your own if I didn't." It was honest, if a little blunt.

"We named her after you – or Grace anyway," Steve said with a dry expression. "Her name's Hannah. It means grace. It was Sarah's idea. Her middle name's the same as Sarah's. We named her after both her mothers." He looked a little uncomfortable with the admission.

Emily already knew her daughter's name, but she wasn't going to admit to her Google stalking. She hadn't realized the name Hannah was in her honor. She stared at him, touched by the gesture even if her name wasn't actually Grace. She held her breath as she waited to see if he would tell her anything else about her daughter.

"God, she looks just like you," Steve said softly.

"Well, she is comprised of half my gene pool," Emily said, feeling a little awkward under his intense stare.

Steve hesitated slightly before turning a wooden picture frame that was facing him on his desk around so it was now facing her.

Emily hadn't been able to find any pictures of her daughter on the Internet – something the mother in her was happy about for safety reasons. But that meant this was the first time she was seeing a photograph of her daughter. A young teenage girl with dark hair that fell just past her shoulders in soft waves and dark eyes stared back at Emily from the confines of the picture frame, taking Emily's breath away.

"May I?" Emily asked as she reached for the frame. She waited for him to nod and then picked up the picture frame, studying her daughter's features closely as she looked for similarities. They weren't hard to find.

Their coloring was similar, but not exactly the same. The girl's hair was dark, but nowhere near as dark as Emily's raven-colored hair. Instead, it was a rich medium brown. The eyes so dark they were almost black with long, thick lashes were identical to Emily's. The light smattering of freckles on the slim, straight nose was the only thing that reminded Emily of Declan. The similarity to Declan was a good indication that Hannah had the Doyle Irish white skin, but Emily chose to ignore that and see what she wanted to see – pale skin that could have just as easily come from her. She didn't want to see traces of the man who had tortured her in her daughter so she didn't.

It wasn't just their coloring. It was Hannah's face that made her look like Emily more than anything else. They had a lot of the same facial features from the high forehead all the way down to the wide smile.

Emily didn't know how long she'd been staring at the picture when Steve cleared his throat pointedly, prompting her to set the picture frame back down on the desk so he could return it to its proper place.

"You're right," Emily said, her voice catching. "She does look like me."

"I know," Steve said simply. He studied her with a conflicted expression for several long seconds. "If I tell her she's adopted and she wants to have a relationship with you, is that – do you want that?"

"Yes," Emily answered without hesitation.

Her eager response must have scared him. He stiffened instantly. "Let's get one thing straight here," he said, looking her straight in the eyes. "I'm her father, and Sarah is – was – her mother. You being here now doesn't change that."

"I know. I understand that. I do. I don't want to step on any toes here," Emily said, knowing she needed to tread carefully. "What happens next is up to you. She's your daughter. But I care about her, too."

Steve held her gaze, his expression softening a little with that affirmation. "I'll tell her she's adopted. I can't make any promises though. I have no idea how she'll react." He shook his head and rolled his eyes to the ceiling as he wondered how that conversation was going to go. He was already dreading it. It wasn't a conversation he ever thought he'd have alone, without Sarah.

"Teenage girls are notoriously unpredictable," Emily said with a trace of humor in her voice.

"You're telling me," he grumbled good-naturedly. "The truth is she's been having a hard time since Sarah died. We both have."

"Is there anything I can do? For either of you?" Emily inquired.

"No. I need to tell her first, and I should be the one to do that," Steve said. He didn't sound very excited for the conversation ahead, and Emily couldn't really blame him – there was no easy way to tell a kid that she was adopted. It would be a huge shock for her. "If you'll give me your contact info, I'll call you if she wants to meet you and we can set something up."

They exchanged phone numbers, and Emily left his office feeling more hopeful than she had in a long time. The meeting had gone a lot better than she thought it would.

Emily knew waiting to hear back from Steve would drive her crazy, but she didn't expect this to be instant. She would wait. It just wouldn't be patiently.

* * *

Buoyed from her meeting with Steve Johnson, Emily called Hotch from the car on her way in to Quantico. She hadn't forgotten her promise to keep him apprised. She knew he would worry if he didn't hear from her. That was just how he was.

At first Aaron Hotchner was surprised to see the call come in from Emily on a Monday morning when she should be at work, or at least on her way in, but then he remembered she was planning to talk to the adoptive father of her daughter that morning.

"Emily?" He questioned as he answered the phone. "Is everything okay?"

Emily heard the concern in his voice and spoke quickly to reassure him. "It's fine."

Hotch thought of how many times she had insisted she was fine in the field when she was in desperate need of medical attention – whether she wanted it or not. If they'd been having the conversation in person, he would have given her an unimpressed look. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you have a very different definition of fine from most people, myself included."

Emily rolled her eyes. "Okay, then you'll be happy to know I'm not calling you for legal advice."

"I take it the conversation with the adoptive father went well then?" Hotch inquired.

"It went way better than I expected," Emily said honestly. She proceeded to give him the Spark Note's version of everything she and Steve Johnson talked about.

"That's great, Emily," Hotch said sincerely. He could hear the nervous excitement in her voice at the prospect of meeting her daughter.

"She may not even want to meet me," Emily rambled nervously. She was trying to manage her own expectations and not get her hopes up too high.

"She will," Hotch told her.

"You can't know that," Emily said.

"Yes, I can," Hotch insisted. "Most adopted children want to know where they come from. You know it's not uncommon for them to seek out their birth parents. We've even had cases where being rejected by a biological parent was a trigger for our unsub. She will want to meet you, Emily. And when she does, she'll love you."

"What if she doesn't?" Emily asked worriedly, gnawing her bottom lip. "I gave her up. She might not understand why. What if she hates me?"

"That's not possible, not once she gets to know you," Hotch told her.

"How can you be so sure?" Emily questioned.

"Because I know you," Hotch said simply. He hesitated, not entirely sure how to ask what he wanted to, or if it was even a good idea, but knowing he didn't want to hang up now and go another couple years without talking to Emily Prentiss again. "Listen, do you have a case right now?"

"Not that I know of," Emily answered. "But I'm just on my way into the office now."

"Let me take you to lunch. Get your mind off waiting for that phone call," Hotch said, referring to the call from the adoptive father that he knew Emily would be anxiously waiting for all day. "Besides, I owe you lunch since you didn't actually end up needing my legal services and you paid the other day."

Emily was pleasantly surprised by the invitation. She thought Aaron Hotchner would go back to his new life that didn't include her, or anyone from the BAU except maybe David Rossi, and she wouldn't see or hear from him again. "I'd love to," she said. "I'll let you know if we get a case. Otherwise, I'll see you at noon. Just let me know where to meet you."

Hotch agreed and ended the call with a smile.

He was still wary of becoming too entrenched with the BAU team after what happened with Foyet and Mr. Scratch, but Emily had been exceedingly careful not to talk about work with him. She was perceptive that way. She'd even managed to navigate the subject of Reid's arrest without bringing work into it, which must have been difficult. He appreciated it more than she probably knew.

The fact was he missed them – _all_ of them – but he had to put Jack first. When he thought of all the times he or another agent on the team had been in danger, even personally targeted by serial killers, he knew the best thing for his son was if Hotch just stayed away from the BAU completely. Unfortunately, that meant keeping his distance from people he'd once considered good friends because their work at the BAU had a way of becoming intertwined with who they were and everything they did.

Maybe it didn't have to be that way. Could he be friends with the various BAU team members outside of work? He didn't know if all of them would be able to compartmentalize as well as Emily. She was unusually adept at keeping her professional life separate from her personal life. He knew she was capable of keeping any personal relationship he might have with her completely separate from her work.

He had almost forgotten how much he'd come to depend on Emily at one time. Outside of David Rossi, she was probably the person whose judgment he trusted the most. He still had a great deal of respect for the woman he handpicked to take his place as Unit Chief – and not just as an agent and a leader, but also as a person.

He meant what he'd said the other day – he thought he and Emily were a lot alike, and not just when it came to how they handled themselves professionally. For one thing, she was the only other person he knew who could even come close to understanding how hard it was to come back and try to reclaim what was left of your life after being in Witness Protection. It was nice to have someone he could talk to about that.

Honestly it was just nice to talk to Emily about anything again. He hadn't realized how much he missed her. It was good to have her back in his life, and he wasn't ready to let his friendship with her slip away again.

* * *

Unfortunately it didn't take long before Emily had to text Hotch to cancel their lunch plans. She was more disappointed than she usually was when she had to cancel plans.

The team had a case.

"Okay, this one came to us courtesy of JJ's hubby," Penelope started. "D.C. Metro didn't even realize they had a case worthy of us, but Will convinced his captain to ask for our help."

"Just out of curiosity, why didn't they think they needed our help?" Rossi questioned.

"There are only two victims so far," Penelope explained. "And only one of them is actually dead. Our first victim is fifteen year old Emma Duncan. She ran away from home after a fight with her stepfather and showed up in the emergency room five days later with a 103-degree fever and an infected surgical wound from – get this – kidney surgery. That's right, she's missing a kidney. It was there when she left home and gone five days later."

"Wait, someone took her kidney?" Luke Alvez asked incredulously.

"That's what I just said," Penelope said a little huffily, her annoyance stemming from who was asking the question, not the question itself. She had finally warmed up to the profiler who replaced Derek Morgan, but she couldn't seem to help herself when she had an opportunity to give Luke a hard time. "Emma was in bad shape when she showed up at the hospital, but she's recovering in the hospital now and is expected to make a full recovery unlike our second victim, seventeen year old Paige Morgan. Paige had an older college-age boyfriend her parents didn't approve of and left home to be with him. Her body was found dumped in a back alley behind the hospital almost a month after she was reported missing by her mother. She was also missing a kidney."

"What was the cause of death?" Tara inquired.

"Like Emma, she had an infection, only Paige's infection went untreated," Penelope said. "She never sought help. She was septic at her time of death."

"Did either of these kids actually _need_ surgery?" Emily asked.

Penelope shook her head. "They were both the very picture of health."

"If our unsub is a doctor, he's not a very good one," Reid commented. "SSIs or surgical site infections only occur in an estimated five percent of surgeries involving incision and are more common in the elderly or people whose immune systems are already compromised. Statistically, there's no way two otherwise healthy teenagers should have both contracted SSIs."

"Unless they only developed infections because they were on the streets instead of in a hospital or at home where they belonged after a surgery like this," JJ mused. She had a mother's disdain for how well any kid would follow a doctor's instructions without a parent making sure they did. She knew Henry wouldn't.

"They were both runaways. Do our victims have anything else in common?" Rossi asked.

"No, nothing. They went to different schools and lived in different neighborhoods in different suburbs of D.C.," Penelope told them.

"Why runaways though?" Reid questioned with a furrowed brow. "It's like JJ said…if our unsub is looking for healthy organ donors, why is he finding his victims on the streets? Runaways have a higher probability of being drug users and having unsafe sex practices."

"He could just be taking whoever's available," Luke suggested.

"He doesn't appear to have a type," Tara added, looking at the pictures of the two victims that were projected in the conference room. "I mean, Emma is brunette and Paige is blonde. They have different body types and are different ages."

As they wrapped up their briefing, Emily took charge, dividing the work ahead of them up amongst the team in a logical manner. "Okay. JJ and Spencer, go talk to the M.E. and conduct your own examination of Paige Morgan's body. Tara and Dave, I want you to go to the hospital and interview Emma Duncan. See what she remembers, if anything," Emily continued divvying up tasks. "The rest of us will look into the black market angle since both victims are missing the same vital organ. Penelope, keep looking to see if you can find _any _other connection between Emma and Paige."

With that, the team split up to go their separate ways. There was no need to take the jet since the case was local.

As Emily got to work with Matt and Luke, her mind was singularly focused on the case and finding whoever was doing this to these girls. The phone call she was waiting for from Steve Johnson completely slipped her mind, her earlier worry and anxiety fading away.

**A/N:** Thanks for reading. The conversation between Emily and Steve Johnson was an important step if Emily's going to have any kind of relationship with Hannah. Steve will be a part of this story just by nature of who he is to Emily's AU daughter, but it will be minimal from this point on. The only OC who will play a big role is Hannah. She will make an appearance in the next two chapters. The next chapter will have some of Emily with David Rossi and Emily with JJ as well as the phone call Emily's anticipating.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 5**

The team had been working diligently to figure out who was performing illegal kidney surgery on teenage runaways since morning. They had a late dinner of Thai from a place that delivered and were still at it hours later.

They had a geographic profile with the hospital as the epicenter. It had to be within walking distance from wherever the surgery was done since Emma made her way there on foot and it was also where Paige's body was dumped.

Between the anesthesia cocktail that was still in her system and her understandable fear and confusion at waking up alone in what appeared to be a hospital bed, Emma Duncan didn't remember much even with a cognitive interview.

They knew Emma must have been in a relatively low traffic area on the outskirts of the city since she all but passed out on a bench and no one found her like that. They weren't sure if she stopped to rest and fell asleep or if she actually fainted – and neither was she. Either way, the next time she woke up, Emma was on a bench somewhere she didn't recognize and felt awful. The drugs were starting to wear off so she was sore from the surgery. She'd also already developed a fever – probably from sleeping outside in November – and felt nauseas from the drugs. She started walking in what could only be described as a feverish haze and was lucky to have stumbled on the hospital. In actuality, luck may have had little to do with it if she'd unknowingly been close to the hospital the entire time.

Emma also couldn't remember seeing anyone before _or_ after waking up. She woke up alone, and the last thing she remembered before that was sitting alone outside of a Metro station in downtown D.C. late at night. That wasn't surprising considering both victims had hypodermic needle marks in their necks. They were drugged by the unsub. That was how they were taken without a struggle, and it was why their only living victim couldn't remember much of anything.

They'd also interviewed a doctor who lost his medical license for selling organs on the black market and followed up on a few leads he gave them from his old network, but had come up empty on that front.

"We know it's not for profit and we know he's not a killer. There's no compulsion here," Tara said, summarizing what they knew as she paced the length of the conference room.

"What would make him abandon his Hippocratic Oath if not money?" Rossi questioned.

"A sense of moral superiority – a God complex if you will," JJ suggested. "And that's why he's targeting runaways…to punish them?"

"Which would make them unwitting donors for whoever he thinks is a worthy candidate," Rossi mused.

"The most likely candidate would be another child or teenager," Reid told them. "Proper organ size is a critical factor in a successful transplant. That's why children are essentially first in line for the organs of other children."

JJ narrowed her eyes in speculation. "It's possible our unsub had a child who died waiting for a kidney transplant."

Tara nodded pensively, adding, "Most likely a daughter since both victims are female."

"If he's a surgeon and his own daughter's death could have been prevented with surgery, that could have made our unsub feel like a failure on every level, personally and professionally," Reid theorized. "Think about it - he has all this training and he still couldn't save his kid."

"That could have caused him to spiral," Simmons acknowledged.

"Especially if he has a big ego," Alvez put in.

"Garcia, can you compile a list of any teenage girls who were on the waiting list for a kidney when they died and see if any of them have fathers who are doctors in the D.C. area?" Emily asked.

"Already on it, fearless leader," Penelope told her.

Emily heard her cell phone vibrate on the table and glanced at the display, frowning slightly when she saw that it was Steve Johnson. It was kind of late for him to be calling. The call she was waiting for had been at the back of her mind as she worked tirelessly on the case. The later it got, the less likely she thought she'd be to hear from him that night. She knew it was possible he hadn't had a chance to talk to Hannah yet or that Hannah just needed time to process everything.

"Excuse me, I have to take this," Emily told the team. She stepped out of the conference room the team was gathered in, only answering her phone once she was alone in the hallway.

Steve sounded surprised when she picked up after that many rings. They exchanged greetings as Emily walked to her office briskly, shutting the door firmly behind her.

"Sorry to call so late," Steve started awkwardly. "It's just Hannah – she ran out on me after I told her she was adopted. She's always done this…gone off on her own when she's upset. She always comes back. I just - I thought she'd be back by now."

"She ran away?" Emily said in a panicked voice.

Damn it, she should have told Steve to hold off on telling Hannah news that could upset her until after they caught the unsub targeting teenage girls who ran away from home. Why didn't she think of that? Now her daughter was out there on the streets of D.C. somewhere. Emily realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that Hannah would fit the victimology perfectly. She couldn't stop her mind from jumping to the worst-case scenario possible – her kid in the hands of the unsub.

"She didn't run away," Steve said a little defensively. "She'll come back on her own when she cools off, but it's getting late and I don't know if I should stay here in case she comes back or go look for her." He was beginning to wonder if he should call the police, but that seemed a little extreme. "Should I call the police? I thought since you're FBI maybe you'd know what to do."

"You said she's done this before?" Emily questioned, wondering just how often her daughter ran away from the parents Emily chose for her.

"She's always gone off on her own when she's upset. That's just how she is," Steve told her. "When she was little, she used to hide out in the treehouse I built her in the woods behind our old house. The last time she hid out there was after Sarah's funeral. It was the only place she could be alone with all the people in the house. Hannah doesn't like to cry in front of anyone. She never has."

Emily's heart broke for the twelve year old girl crying over losing her mother alone in a treehouse. She didn't know what to say.

"Now she usually just goes for a walk when she needs to get away," Steve continued. "She's never stayed gone this long though. It's been hours. I don't know what to do. I'm getting really worried."

"How long has she been gone?" Emily demanded.

"I told her after dinner so around 8:00…8:30 at the latest."

It was after eleven. Hannah had already been missing for three hours, give or take. Emily's heart plummeted in her chest. As an FBI agent, she knew how crucial the first few hours were in finding a missing kid. They'd lost that time because Steve waited so long to call her.

If this were strictly work, Emily would have asked why any parent waited that long to report their kid missing, but she didn't want to start playing the blame game with Steve. That wouldn't end well.

"Have you tried calling her?" Emily asked instead. She would usually ask if a parent had checked with the friends of a missing kid, however if she liked to be alone when she was upset, Hannah wouldn't be with anyone else.

"She doesn't have her phone with her. She doesn't have her phone or backpack or anything with her. She didn't even take her jacket. She just left in the heat of the moment. I'm telling you she wasn't running away," Steve insisted.

Hannah may have been running away from the conversation, but she wasn't actually running away from home. She must have left in a hurry, not even taking her cell phone or jacket. Most kids took a backpack of supplies with them when they ran away.

There was no plan. Even when Emily Prentiss was reckless, she always had a plan. Ian Doyle had also planned meticulously. How had they managed to have a kid who would just leave home with no plan whatsoever?

"Did she say anything before she left?" Emily inquired.

"Not exactly," Steve said with an audible sigh. "There wasn't a lot of talking. More like yelling…at me."

Emily got the sense that Hannah wasn't just shocked by the news, but also angry at having the truth kept from her. If she felt like her adoptive father betrayed her trust, there was a chance she'd go looking for Emily.

"Does she know who I am? Did you tell her my name?" Emily asked.

"I was going to, but she ran off before I could," Steve told her.

It would have been easier to find Hannah if she were looking for Emily, but Emily knew it wouldn't be good for her if Steve saw her as any more of a threat to his role in Hannah's life than he already did just by nature of who she was to Hannah. It was probably a good thing Hannah hadn't run out on him to find her.

But that left Emily with absolutely no idea as to what the girl could have been thinking when she ran out of her house or where she might have gone. Emily knew she had to think like a profiler and not a mother, but that was easier said than done when she felt a mother's worry for her child. It was a whole new level of fear and panic unlike anything Emily had ever experienced. How was she this scared for a kid she didn't know?

Emily tried to put herself in Hannah's shoes – something the BAU did to piece together the movements of unsubs and victims alike.

Would the girl want to talk to her adoptive mother or would she be just as angry with the dead woman as she was with her adoptive father?

Would the familiarity of the house she'd grown up in bring Hannah comfort when she probably felt like her entire world had been turned upside down? Steve referred to the house with the treehouse as their old house. Someone else would have moved into the house when they moved out, but it crossed Emily's mind that Hannah could have reverted back to hiding in the treehouse in the woods behind the house. It would be a good place to go if she wanted to be alone.

"Would she have gone to your old house?" Emily questioned the man who raised her daughter.

"I don't know. I don't think so," Steve answered honestly. "She would have to take the Metro from D.C. to Bethesda, and I don't know if she'd even know which line to take. I always drive her if she wants to see her friends there."

"Does she ever take the Metro?" Emily asked. "Not necessarily to Bethesda, but anywhere in D.C?"

"Only to get home from school in the afternoon," Steve replied. "And she _knows_ she's not supposed to take the Metro alone at night. If she has volleyball or anything that goes late, she knows to call me for a ride."

Emily thought that was a good rule, but didn't know that the kid would be following the rules to the letter just then. If she were angry enough, Hannah might break her father's rules just to spite him.

"I know you said she didn't have anything with her, but did she have any money?" Emily asked suddenly.

"She might," Steve said. He thought about how many times he'd had to dig money out of the bottom of the washing machine. Hannah had a habit of stuffing change in the back pocket of her jeans and forgetting it was there. It wouldn't be much, but she could have change from a twenty after getting coffee or food with friends. "She could have had some in her pockets."

"What was she wearing?" Emily questioned.

"Jeans and a purple sweater," Steve answered confidently.

"Okay, stay there and call me if she comes home. I'm going to find her," Emily told him resolutely.

* * *

Everyone stopped talking and it felt like all eyes were on her when Emily walked back into the conference room where the team was gathered.

"Is everything okay?" Rossi asked.

"I'm going to need to take some personal time. I'm not sure how much…probably just the rest of the night," Emily announced, ignoring Rossi's inquiry completely. "Dave will be Acting Unit Chief until I'm back."

Rossi blinked in surprise and tilted his head to the side, giving her a long look. Emily Prentiss didn't take nights off, especially not in the middle of a case. "Okay," he agreed. "But first a word?"

Emily recognized the steely command disguised as a polite request. She nodded and stepped outside the conference room once again, knowing he would follow her.

Since Rossi already knew about the daughter she gave up, it would be easier to tell him what was going on than it would be to tell anyone else. Considering the victimology, Emily knew the team needed to know about Hannah.

"You know I'll cover for you while you're out, no problem," Rossi started. "But not until you tell me what's going on with you."

To his surprise, Emily was forthcoming with information. She filled him in on her meeting with Steve and the phone call she'd just received.

Rossi could hear the stress and worry in her voice as Emily told him her daughter was missing. It didn't take a genius to make the connection between the victimology in their case and her missing kid – a connection he knew she'd already made. He winced. "She picked a hell of a time to run off."

"If I had just told her adoptive father not to tell her until after we found this guy…" Emily trailed off. Her guilty expression said what she didn't – she was blaming herself.

"Don't do that to yourself," Rossi said, his eyes pleading with her to actually listen to him and give herself a break for once in her life. He knew Emily Prentiss was harder on herself than anyone else could ever be. "If her adoptive parents had told her she was adopted when she was old enough to understand what that meant, it would be a non-issue now. And I'm sorry, but Hannah isn't exactly blameless here either. However upset she is, running off like this is not the answer. Look, all I'm saying is that there's plenty of blame to go around, but playing the blame game isn't going to help Hannah right now."

"Yeah, well, they didn't know our unsub is targeting teenage girls who run away from home. I did," Emily muttered with a sigh.

"Don't worry, Emily. We'll find her," Rossi said in a reassuring tone, giving her shoulder a comforting squeeze.

"There is no we," Emily told him. "I can't justify pulling anyone from a BAU case to help me with something personal."

"Pardon my French, but that's bullshit and you know it," Rossi said bluntly. "I hate to say it, but Hannah fits the victimology to a tee. Emily, she's your daughter. That makes her one of us. We take care of our own in the BAU. Now do you want to tell the team or should I?"

* * *

As tempting as it was to take the coward's way out and let Rossi tell everyone, Emily wasn't a coward.

They all reacted differently when she told them about Hannah. Predictably Penelope Garcia had the biggest - and loudest - reaction of anyone.

Penelope saw Emily keeping her daughter a secret as a personal affront. The tech analyst prided herself on knowing everything about everyone and felt like she'd failed at her self-proclaimed sacred duty to be all-knowing by not knowing about Emily's long lost daughter.

Emily refrained from telling Garcia that it was none of her business, but she wasn't going to apologize for keeping her best-kept and most fiercely guarded secret from the notorious gossip that was Penelope Garcia. Emily loved the woman, but she couldn't keep a secret if her life depended on it.

Fortunately the bubbly blonde couldn't stay mad at anyone long. Her excitement over the prospect of finally having a niece to spoil won out over any annoyance she may have felt. She wanted to know everything there was to know about her new honorary niece. Her fingers flew across the keyboard on her tablet as she searched for the digital footprint any living, breathing fourteen year old would leave.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Garcia, but there are no pictures of her online," Emily said, trying to save her the trouble. "I looked."

"Ah, but you are a mere mortal, and I am a tech goddess. You should leave the technical sleuthing to me," Penelope told her as she expertly bypassed the privacy settings on the girl's Instagram and projected a picture of Hannah with her arms wrapped around a Golden Retriever on the screen in the conference room.

The newer members of the team had all been relatively quiet. None of them knew Emily as well as the others who had worked together for more than ten years, and they didn't really feel like it was their business. Luke couldn't resist making a crack about the Golden Retriever though. He'd pegged Emily as a cat person from day one. And, true to form, she'd been the only female member of the team who didn't fawn all over Roxy at his housewarming party, proving him right – she was definitely a cat person.

"Prentiss' kid is a dog person," he said with a smirk. "I didn't see that one coming."

"She's so beautiful," Penelope breathed. "She's like a mini-Emily."

"If you take Emily's hair color and Doyle's hair color into consideration, there's almost no chance that a biological child with both their genes would have hair that's any color but brown. Now genetically speaking her eyes could have been brown or blue, but statistically brown is the most common eye color. It's estimated than anywhere from seventy to ninety percent of people in the world have brown eyes," Reid said in a matter-of-fact tone.

JJ stared at Reid with wide eyes as he casually told everyone in the room who the father of Emily's child was. Everyone who'd been a part of the team when Ian Doyle escaped from prison had been able to do the math, but the newer members of the team didn't know Doyle was the undercover assignment Emily referred to when she gave them the rundown on Hannah.

Reid paused uncertainly, seeing the look JJ was giving him. He knew he didn't always react the way people expected, but he was simply stating facts. "What? I'm just saying it's not surprising that Emily's daughter has her coloring."

JJ merely smiled and shook her head at how oblivious the genius could be part of the time. She supposed she should just be glad he hadn't said anything tactless about adoption - yet. Reid had his own abandonment issues from his father leaving. If he started relating that to Emily leaving Hannah with someone who wasn't her, they'd be in trouble.

With her clearance level, JJ knew more about Doyle than anyone else on the team except, of course, Emily. She was also the only one there who'd actually seen Emily when she was recovering from the injuries and torture Doyle inflicted on her in the hospital.

Knowing what she did, JJ could understand why Emily didn't feel like she could keep her baby safe. As the only other mother on the team, JJ recognized the act of giving her daughter up to protect her as truly selfless. Emily wouldn't have parted with her child unless she felt she had no other choice. JJ knew Emily wanted kids. Having a kid out there somewhere that wasn't with her had to be killing her.

"Thanks for the biology lesson, Spencer. Maybe we can continue it sometime when Hannah isn't missing," Rossi said pointedly. As the most experienced profiler in the room and one of the most respected members of the team, he had no problem taking control of the room. When he spoke, everyone listened. "Now, as I'm sure we're all aware, Emily's daughter fits the victimology, which means we need to find her before he does."

**A/N:** This was getting too long with the promised JJ and Emily conversation so it will be in the next chapter instead. Most of the next chapter is written so it should be done soon. Please let me know if there are any characters you want to see more of.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 6**

The most likely way for a fourteen year old to get from D.C. to Bethesda, Maryland on her own was public transportation. And if Hannah Johnson had taken the Metro, she would have left breadcrumbs – breadcrumbs Emily would follow.

There were two Metro cards registered to Steve Johnson, neither of which had been used that night.

"Can you see if anyone paid for a new Metro card with cash at the Metro Station at Connecticut and Woodley after 8:00 pm tonight?" Emily asked as she looked at the computer screen over Penelope's shoulder. Most locals would have a registered, reloadable Metro card, and most tourists would pay by credit card, but a kid with no credit card would pay with cash.

"Yes," Penelope replied as she typed frantically. "Okay, I have three cards bought with cash at that station."

"Were any of them bought between 8:00 and 9:00?" Emily questioned, trying to narrow it down based on when Steve said Hannah left the house.

"One of them. It was swiped at 8:42 pm. It was swiped again thirteen minutes later at the Bethesda Metro Station. That's the last time it was swiped," Penelope told her. "Hold on, I'm seeing if I can tap into the security cameras to see if it was her."

They waited as Penelope typed away furiously. She got into the stored video footage from the camera by the kiosks and fast-forwarded to 8:40 pm, letting it play from there.

The crowd had thinned out from rush hour, but there was still a steady stream of commuters. The profilers scanned the crowd for anyone who could be Hannah. It was mostly young professionals in business attire on their way home from the office, happy hour, or dinner. There were a few families in casual attire mixed in. They looked like tourists. A lone jean-clad teenager stood out from the crowd. The teenager was a girl with brunette hair. Penelope zoomed in.

"It's her," Emily said, seeing the purple sweater Steve said she was wearing. "That means she's still in Bethesda."

It gave Emily a starting point and narrowed her daughter's location down a little, but Hannah could still be anywhere in Bethesda.

"The Metro stops running at 11:30 pm during the week," Reid pointed out. "But the last train leaves approximately thirty minutes before that. It's after eleven now. If she missed the last train, she could be stuck there with no phone and no way of calling anyone."

Emily thought of Emma Duncan, who was taken when she was sitting outside of a Metro station late at night. Was Hannah was sitting outside the Metro station in Bethesda? She didn't like the idea of that. She didn't like it at all.

"Hey, at least Bethesda's outside the geographic profile," Alvez said with a glance at Emily.

Bethesda was only seven miles north of Washington, which might not seem like a lot, but it was a thirty-minute drive.

"It's unlikely the unsub will look for his next victim outside Washington," Simmons agreed.

"That's true. It's actually better for her to be stranded in Bethesda than for her to be anywhere in D.C. right now," Reid acknowledged.

"It would be better for her to be at home where she belongs," Rossi said definitively, knowing how he would feel if it were Joy who fit the victimology of their unsub. It wouldn't matter that the geographic profile didn't fit. A parent's worry for their child wasn't always rational.

"Emily, do you have any idea where she could have gone?" JJ questioned gently.

"I have a few ideas, but they're just that – ideas," Emily replied with uncharacteristic uncertainty in her voice.

"Care to share?" Rossi asked dryly.

Emily thought she'd check the treehouse Steve had mentioned first and then maybe the cemetery where Sarah was buried, but she knew Hannah might not be either of those places.

If she were angry with them for keeping her adoption a secret, the teenager could have gone somewhere that had no connection to either of her adoptive parents – someplace significant only to her. If she had, Emily would have no clue where to even begin looking for her. She didn't know Hannah. She didn't know the first thing about Hannah's favorite places in Bethesda or anywhere else – and she admitted as much to her team.

"Where did you go when you were a kid and wanted to be alone?" Rossi asked Emily.

He wasn't going to say it, but running away was classic Emily Prentiss - and he didn't just mean when she ran to go after Ian Doyle on her own. No, that he actually understood. She did it to protect the team. But then she left them _again_ to go to London. If it had just been because the job offer was too good to pass up, he might have been able to understand, but he knew there was more to it than that. One minute she was about to buy a house in D.C. and the next Emily was moving to London. Even as recently as last year when Linda Barnes was investigating the BAU under her leadership, Emily's first instinct was to leave the team and go back to London. Thankfully Reid convinced her to stay. But the instinct to run away…that was something Hannah got from Emily. Was it so crazy to think the daughter might run to the same type of place the mother had as a kid?

At first Emily thought Rossi was posing the question to everyone on the team, but his gaze was fixed on her and everyone seemed to be waiting expectantly for her to answer. She stared at him blankly. "I…didn't have to go anywhere if I wanted to be alone. Growing up I was left alone in my parents' house when they were at work, and they worked a lot."

Rossi suppressed a grimace as Emily reminded him how lonely her childhood was. He knew she wouldn't want his pity so he wouldn't give it, but he thought she deserved so much more than what her parents had given her. Sometimes David Rossi wondered how someone raised by such cold parents could have turned into the warm, caring woman he knew and loved as if she were family.

"I ran away once, if you could even call it that. I just went to the park by our house," JJ said with a self-deprecating scoff and an eye roll. "I was eleven. It was after Roz died. I ended up going home before my mom even realized I was gone. My sleeping bag had nothing on central heating." She offered the team a sheepish grin. While it wasn't something she was proud of, JJ was willing to swallow her pride if it got the team's attention off of Emily and her complex relationship with her parents.

"I never ran away," Reid said.

"I did," Alvez told them. "After I got suspended for fighting at school. I knew my parents were gonna be pissed so I took off. I crashed at a friend's house. I thought my parents would be so happy to see me when I came home the next day that they'd go easy on me."

Tara raised her eyebrows. "Did they?"

"No," Alvez muttered ruefully. "I got in even more trouble."

"Running away doesn't make problems go away. It's better to face our problems head-on," Rossi said.

"Hannah's not going to have much choice," Emily said wryly. "She's going to have to face me."

As much as she wanted to be a part of her daughter's life, she would have respected it if the girl weren't ready for that. But by running away the teenager had inadvertently moved up the timeline for meeting Emily. Whether she was ready or not, Hannah would soon find herself in a room with her adoptive father and her biological mother finishing the very conversation she was running from in the first place. Hannah wouldn't be able to run this time – if she tried, her FBI agent mother would catch her before she made it out the door. The kid would have to stay and face the fact that she was adopted. It would give Emily a chance to explain the circumstances and answer any questions Hannah had. Emily didn't think it could get more head-on than that.

Rossi tilted his head slightly, his eyes narrowing as the implication of her words hit him. "You're not her problem, Emily. Her problem is with her adoptive parents not telling her that she was adopted."

Emily raised her eyebrows skeptically, scoffing. "Oh, and you don't think she's going to have a problem with me giving her up?"

"She might," Rossi acknowledged. "Just remember you're not the one she ran away from here."

"I'm going to go find my little runaway," Emily told them.

Rossi glanced at her. "Take someone with you."

"I can't take anyone else away from the case," Emily said with a weary sigh, sensing the pending argument. "We've already established that Hannah's outside the geographic profile. She's not in danger."

Rossi stared at her a little incredulously. "Your daughter doesn't have to be a victim for us to help you find her. Are you telling me we wouldn't help JJ and Will if it were Henry who was missing or Matt if it were one of his kids?"

"That's different," Emily protested.

"No, it's not," Reid argued, earning a small glare from Emily. "If it were any of us, you wouldn't let us handle it alone. Why should you be any different?"

"Take someone with you, Emily." Rossi wasn't making the request as a colleague, but as someone who cared about her. "You _did_ name me Acting Unit Chief as of about twenty minutes ago – around the same time your personal time started," he reminded her, trying to preempt her pulling rank on him. "Now pick someone or I will."

Emily knew they had a point, but she didn't have to like it. Her gaze roamed over the faces of the team members as she carefully weighed the pros and cons of each of them.

Luke Alvez was the first she eliminated. He'd taken his demotion in stride, but it hadn't even been a month. Emily knew he probably harbored some resentment toward her for coming down on him when he disobeyed her orders and went after former DEA Agent Jeremy Grant on his own.

Reid was like the little brother Emily never had, but she knew he lacked tact at times. Emily wasn't going to risk him saying anything insensitive to Hannah. Plus, she was a little annoyed that he and Rossi had tag-teamed her.

David Rossi was the single most experienced member of the team. Emily needed him to take the lead while her attention was split between the case and her missing kid. Even if she wanted to pick him – and a part of her did - she knew she couldn't.

Emily was a notoriously private person, and she still didn't know Matt Simmons that well outside of work. She didn't want or need an audience the first time she met her daughter, but if she had to have one, it wasn't going to be the newest member of the team who she was still getting to know on a personal level.

That left Tara Lewis or JJ. Logically speaking, they both had merit. Tara's psychology background could come in handy when dealing with an upset kid. Then again JJ was a mother and had the most firsthand experience with kids of anyone on the team.

But JJ was JJ – Emily's best friend in the entire world.

Emily cut her eyes to the blonde profiler. "JJ?"

* * *

It was just under an hour drive from Quantico to Bethesda. Traffic was light that late at night, and they were in an FBI Suburban equipped with emergency lights so the speed limit wasn't an issue for them. At the rate they were going, they were probably going to make it there in a little over half an hour.

JJ was driving, and Emily was sitting in the passenger seat looking like she was lost in her own thoughts – thoughts that were probably not very pretty. JJ waited until they were on the highway and then decided she had to say something or Emily would spend the entire drive like that.

"It's amazing how easy it comes," JJ started with a glance at Emily. She waited for Emily to look at her with a quizzical expression, showing that Emily was actually listening. "Worrying," JJ explained once she had her friend's attention.

Emily blew out her breath. "It sucks."

"Yeah, well, get used to it," JJ told her with a soft chuckle. "You're a mom now."

"Hardly," Emily scoffed. "I'm a virtual stranger to her."

"Yeah, a virtual stranger she looks exactly like," JJ said, not bothering to hide her smirk.

"Not exactly."

"Pretty close," JJ said in an amused tone.

"Let's just hope she doesn't act like me," Emily muttered.

"Because it would be so terrible if she graduated from Yale cum laude," JJ said sarcastically.

"That was when I was older. When I was her age, I was busy checking all the boxes for teenage rebellion. Smoking, drinking, boys…you name it, I did it," Emily said warily.

It wasn't brand new information for JJ. Emily had been known to drop little hints about her rebellious youth on cases – just a comment here and there about her parents not knowing she smoked or drank as they came across teenagers engaging in the same risky behaviors Emily had when she was their age.

With little to no parental guidance, Emily Prentiss had somehow gone from a gothic teenager to an FBI agent with a Master's degree from an Ivy League school. She hadn't completely lost her edginess along the way. It was just well hidden under the perfectly tailored suits she favored.

They had all seen rare glimpses of the rebellious teenager Emily once was in the woman she had become. It was most evident when Linda Barnes, Erin Strauss, even Aaron Hotchner did something to piss her off. Emily had mastered the fine art of being perfectly polite while injecting just enough disrespect into her tone to make her opinion of whomever she was talking to crystal clear. JJ could definitely picture a sassy teenage Emily giving her mother major attitude.

Emily still bent the rules from time to time, but it was always for a good cause. JJ knew her friend had a cause for her bad behavior as a teenager – it was just a little less noble.

"You would have done anything to get your parents' attention," JJ said with a knowing expression.

Emily nodded slowly. "When you're a kid, negative attention is better than no attention."

JJ stared straight ahead out the windshield as she thought of her own kids – the kids she hated leaving to do the job she chose. "Henry does the same thing sometimes."

"No!" Emily exclaimed in a scandalized tone. "I don't believe it."

"Usually right as I'm leaving because we have a case. I think he thinks if he acts out, I'll stay home to deal with him. Last time he saw me grab my go-bag, he immediately picked a fight with Michael. You would think I was leaving him alone instead of with Will." JJ rolled her eyes at that.

"Will's a good father," Emily said with conviction. She offered JJ a small smile, knowing her friend was feeling guilty for how often she left Henry and Michael. "And if my mother were half the mother you are, I wouldn't have done all the things I did as a cry for attention."

"So you still would have done some of them?" JJ said wryly, fixing Emily with a mock-stern glare.

"Hey, I had to try to fit in even though I'm a closet nerd," Emily said defensively.

"Oh, you came out of the closet a long time ago," JJ told her. "We know you're a huge nerd, and we love you anyway."

Emily was able to laugh at herself a little, and JJ was laughing along with her. It was good to hear Emily laugh when she was so tightly wound with worry for her missing kid. JJ knew the worry was still there – how could it not be? But at least the good-natured teasing that her nerdiness was no secret had succeeded in distracting her momentarily.

"Outside of stereotypical sibling rivalry, Henry's a really good kid," Emily assured her friend. "And if he's going to emulate anyone on the team, it'll be his godfather. He really looks up to Spencer."

"I know, right?" JJ agreed. "He's been watching magic trick tutorials on YouTube." She was quiet for a minute as she studied her friend, contemplating whether Emily would take what JJ wanted to tell her in the spirit it was intended – as an honor – or if it would just serve to make the other woman feel guilty. "You know, your name came up as a potential godmother for Michael. It was actually at the top of the list. The only reason we didn't ask you is because you were in London when he was born, and we didn't know if you were coming back."

Garcia and Spencer were already Henry's godparents. As another one of JJ's best friends, Emily was a natural choice when they had their second-born, but she was living in London. Emily was good at staying in touch – she'd had to be with how much she moved around, but Michael wouldn't have been able to have the kind of relationship with her long-distance that Henry had with Penelope and Spencer.

Now that Emily was back, she was a favorite of both JJ's kids. Emily was always game to play the games the other adults preferred to sit out – games like hide-and-seek and chase. They always had a great time playing with their fun Aunt Emily, and she seemed to genuinely enjoy them.

Emily glanced at JJ, visibly touched.

"You were a little busy, you know, running Interpol," JJ continued with a grin.

"Not too busy for you," Emily told her.

"I know," JJ acknowledged.

Emily more than proved that when she dropped everything and came back from London after JJ was abducted by Tivon Askari. He and Michael Hastings – mainly Hastings - were torturing JJ for her access code to the systems containing sensitive data from her previous assignment with the State Department. The team would never have been able to find her without Emily's help.

When it came down to it, there was no one JJ would rather have on her side than Emily in a moment like that when everything was on the line.

Emily Prentiss didn't let just anyone get close to her, but she would do almost anything for the people that actually made it past her infamous walls. JJ considered herself lucky to be one of the select few on that short list.

JJ just wished Emily would see that it was a two-way street. Why was it so hard for Emily to accept their help?

Unbeknownst to Emily, they were not the only two profilers on the way to Bethesda. JJ, however, knew from a text message that Rossi was sending Tara and Reid to check the Bethesda Metro Station and then hit the streets on the off chance that Hannah wasn't in the treehouse or at the cemetery like Emily thought she would be.

Rossi waited for Emily and JJ to leave because he didn't want to hear any argument about it from Emily. They were helping her whether she wanted their help or not.

They hadn't forgotten about the case in the midst of Emily's personal drama. While Emily was on the phone with Hannah's father, Garcia had compiled a list of teenage girls who were on the waiting list for a kidney transplant when they died and then cross-referenced it with relatives who were or ever had been doctors in the D.C. area. They had a suspect who fit the profile, and Matt Simmons and Luke Alvez were headed to his home address. If he was there, they would be bringing him in for questioning.

* * *

Emily didn't know what she was expecting, but the treehouse in the woods just behind the Johnson's old house was not it. For one thing, instead of natural colored wood, the treehouse was painted light pink with white trim. It had definitely been built for a little girl. The paint had faded and chipped over the years, but she could tell a lot of love went into making it. It was fairly elaborate. It looked more like a playhouse than a rustic treehouse. There was an impressive wraparound porch, a door, and windows.

Emily had not been looking forward to climbing a tree, but it turned out she didn't need to worry – there was an actual ladder. JJ waited on the ground while Emily went up the ladder.

"Hannah?" Emily called out, not wanting to scare the girl if she were in there. She opened the door, ducking her head so it wouldn't hit the doorframe, and looked around. It was empty.

Emily shook her head as she emerged from the treehouse, silently conveying to JJ that it had been a bust. She didn't know that her hunch was right and Hannah _had_ been there earlier. Emily was just too late. If Steve had called her earlier, Emily would have found her daughter crying in the treehouse.

JJ had her cell phone pressed to her ear. She watched warily as Emily descended the ladder. When Emily reached the ground, JJ moved her cell phone away from her ear a little. "Would now be a good time to tell you that Tara and Spencer are here?"

"What are they doing here?" Emily demanded. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate their help - she did. It was just that they now had more than half the team looking for her daughter instead of looking for their unsub. If there was another victim, it would be on Emily.

"The same thing we're doing, only they found her," JJ told her. "She's sitting outside the Metro station. What do you want them to do? Emily?"

Emily held out her hand for JJ's phone. Taking it from the blonde, she gave instructions. "Stay in the car. Keep eyes on her until we get there. If you see anyone else approach her, get her out of there. I'm on my way."

* * *

Bethesda was an affluent suburb. The highly rated public schools were a big draw for families. For the most part, it was established families with school-aged kids who could afford the housing prices in the area. As a result, there were a lot of families with teenagers and some empty nesters in the area. Most of them were asleep. No one was out.

The dark street would have been completely dead if it weren't for the FBI agents. Tara and Reid were idling on the street in their Suburban. Emily watched JJ slide into the backseat and waited for Tara to drive away. As grateful as she was for their help, Emily didn't want an audience when she met her daughter for the first time.

There was a stone fountain outside of the Metro station. Hannah was sitting on a white brick ledge facing the fountain. The sound of the fountain running must have drowned out the sound of Emily's light footsteps because the girl didn't even look up when Emily approached her cautiously.

"Hannah?" Emily called out gently.

Hannah's head snapped up when she heard her name, startled red-rimmed eyes meeting Emily's gaze for the first time. It was clear the girl had been crying even though she wasn't crying anymore. Her brow furrowed and she gave Emily a questioning look as she wondered how the woman knew her name.

"My name's Emily."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 7**

"My name's Emily. I'm with the FBI."

Hannah frowned, wondering how a stranger knew her name. She narrowed her eyes as she sized the woman up. Emily was wearing a black blazer over a striped button-down shirt with black slacks – a classic suit. Her Glock was holstered at her hip and her badge was clearly visible. She definitely looked like an FBI agent, even to the untrained teenager's eye.

For her part, Emily knew what Hannah was doing and stayed where she was, keeping her body language non-threatening as she waited for Hannah to finish her examination.

Perhaps if Hannah wasn't so concerned with the fact that she was being picked up by the FBI, she might have noticed how much she looked like the woman standing in front of her, but all she saw was the badge and gun. She swallowed hard as she wondered how much trouble she was in. Her dad must have called the police and reported her missing. That was the only reason she could think of that the FBI agent would know who she was and be looking for her.

"FBI?" Hannah said in a panicked voice once she accepted that Emily was who she said she was. Her eyes widened and her expression said _oh, shit_. "My dad called the cops?"

Emily opened her mouth and then closed it again as she studied the nervous teenager and decided how she wanted to play this. Assuming her kid was smart enough _not_ to get in the car with a stranger, Emily was only using her position and badge as a way to make Hannah comfortable leaving with her without revealing their connection. She didn't anticipate that the perceived involvement of the FBI in finding her would make the teenager realize how serious running away was. She didn't feel too badly for scaring her kid a little, even if it wasn't her intention – maybe now Hannah would think twice before doing anything like this again. But Emily wasn't going to let the kid sweat it out any longer – that would just be mean. She fought the sudden urge to comfort her scared kid and instead relied on her words to reassure the girl.

"You're not in trouble. I'm just here to bring you home, that's all."

Hannah nodded dejectedly. Just because she wasn't in trouble with the cops didn't mean she wouldn't be in trouble with her dad. If he called the police, she knew she was going to be in trouble – the only question was how much.

Even though she wasn't looking forward to facing the angry parent she was sure would be waiting for her at home, Hannah got up from the ledge she was sitting on and walked over to Emily unprompted. She was tired and cold, and she wanted to go home - even if it meant her dad would never let her leave the house again.

Emily was the first person Hannah had seen since arriving at the closed Metro station. There hadn't been anyone to ask for help. It had crossed her mind to go to a restaurant and ask to use the phone there, but pretty much everything was closed that late on a weeknight in the sleepy suburb. Hannah had no idea what to do or how she was going to get home until Emily showed up. If she were being honest, Hannah was glad to have someone – anyone – there who could help, even if Emily's presence there could only mean her dad had completely freaked out when she left.

They walked to the street where the Suburban was parked. Emily was watching her daughter out of the corner of her eye in case the girl decided to make a break for it. But judging by Hannah's resigned demeanor, Emily didn't think she would.

Hannah hesitated slightly when they reached the SUV. She didn't know if she was supposed to sit in the front or in the back like a criminal. The FBI agent said she wasn't in trouble, but it certainly _felt_ like she was in trouble. She was essentially being brought home by the police, and it wasn't even _just_ a cop - it was an FBI agent. That seemed like a bigger deal in the teenager's brain.

"Ms., um, Agent?" Hannah started nervously.

"You can call me Emily," Emily told her. She appreciated the show of manners and respect, but it would be _way_ too formal to have her daughter calling her Agent Prentiss.

"Um, do you want me to sit in the front…or the back?" Hannah asked awkwardly.

"The front," Emily answered immediately. She could guess what the girl was thinking and gave her an incredulous look. "What, did you think I was going to put you in the back like a common criminal?" She teased a little, trying to get her kid to relax. "I told you you're not in trouble."

Once they were both in the car, Emily turned the heat on full blast and reached over to make sure the vents on the passenger side were aimed at Hannah. The girl wasn't shivering, but she'd been out in the cold November night air without a jacket for hours. She had to be cold. Emily was, and she hadn't been outside nearly as long as Hannah had.

Next Emily dialed Steve Johnson on her cell. She knew every minute she hadn't known where her daughter was had been excruciating for her, and she didn't even know Hannah. She could only imagine how the man who had actually raised the girl felt not knowing where she was. She needed to let him know Hannah was okay.

"Emily? Did you find her?" Steve answered frantically after one ring.

"I've got her," Emily told him. "We're on the way now. We'll be there in ten to fifteen minutes."

Emily kept the call short. Bethesda wasn't far from Washington. It would be a short drive and then they would all be in the same place. Emily was going to tell Hannah who she was to her, but she thought it would be better for all three of them to talk – the adoptive father, the biological mother, and most importantly the daughter they shared.

"Was that my dad?" Hannah asked softly after Emily hung up.

"It was," Emily confirmed.

Hannah bit her bottom lip. "How mad is he?"

Emily glanced at her anxious kid with a sympathetic expression. "I think he's just glad you're okay. He was worried sick."

"I wanted to go home. I really did," Hannah said earnestly, feeing like she owed the woman some kind of explanation. "I didn't know the Metro stopped running, and then I didn't know what to do."

"It's a good thing I showed up when I did then," Emily said simply, offering Hannah a small smile.

The rest of the drive was quiet with the exception of Hannah giving Emily directions once they got to D.C. Both occupants of the SUV were nervous about what would happen when they arrived at their destination, although they each had very different reasons for their worry.

Emily was worried about how her daughter would react. What if meeting Emily the same day she found out she was adopted was too much for the fourteen year old? But not telling Hannah who she was to her would make Emily just another person in a long line of people keeping the truth from her. The girl was already upset enough with her father for doing that. Emily didn't want to give Hannah a reason to be angry with her, too. She knew there was a chance her daughter would be angry and hurt over being given up in the first place and didn't need to add to that.

Hannah was still angry with her dad, but she also felt terrible about how she left things with him. She knew she needed to apologize for leaving the way she did. It just felt like everything she thought she knew was a lie. She wasn't who she thought she was, and her parents weren't who she thought they were. In one night, she lost the blind faith she'd always had in them. Her dad was the one person she should have been able to trust most in the world, and she felt like he'd been lying to her for her entire life. But he was still her dad. He was still the person who built her a treehouse and painted it pink because it was her favorite color when she was little. He was still the person who hung a basketball hoop on their old garage for her when she decided to try basketball in middle school. The hoop was still there even though they'd moved. Her dad had played countless games of Horse with her in their old driveway as a way for her to practice, but her first season had still been her last - she'd been terrible in spite of having a height advantage over most of the other players. Being back at her old house in Bethesda had brought back memories of all the things her dad had done for her – things only a real parent would do. And that just made her feel incredibly guilty for scaring him enough that he called the police. She always went somewhere she could be alone when she was upset, but she'd never been gone this long before. She hadn't even realized how late it was until she saw the digital clock in the Suburban. No wonder her dad freaked out – it was after 1:00 am. He was going to kill her.

Following Hannah's directions, Emily pulled up to a townhouse in one of the many residential pockets in urban Washington. It was a nice neighborhood, but they had definitely downsized from their old house in Bethesda.

After Sarah died, Steve and Hannah both agreed that they needed a change of scenery. The old house contained too many memories of the wife and mother that the father and daughter had lost. The townhouse they moved to was a lot closer to Steve's office. It may have been a short drive when it was after midnight on a weekday, but traffic in D.C. was legendary, and Washington to Bethesda was not a fun commute in rush hour traffic. Well aware he was the only parent Hannah had left, Steve always felt guilty spending an hour sitting in traffic when he could have been picking Hannah up from volleyball or helping her with her homework.

True to her word, Emily maneuvered the large SUV into a space on the crowded tree-lined street less than fifteen minutes after ending the call to Steve. When she turned the ignition off, Hannah realized Emily was going to walk her to the door.

"You don't have to walk me to the door," Hannah told her quickly. Like most kids, she didn't like being yelled at or scolded in front of other people, even if the other person in question was an FBI agent she would probably never see again.

Emily glanced at the girl in surprise. "Uh, I need to talk to your dad."

Hannah hoped her dad would wait until the woman left before he killed her. On second thought, maybe having a witness would work in her favor - he wouldn't kill her in front of an FBI agent. "He probably won't kill me if you're there," she mused.

"He's not going to kill you," Emily said with a half laugh. She didn't remember being that dramatic as a teenager, but to be fair, her parents wouldn't have missed her if she'd disappeared for hours on end so she couldn't say she'd ever been in Hannah's shoes.

Steve left the porch light on for them and was waiting anxiously by the door. He opened it when he saw Hannah and drew her into a bone-crushing hug, meeting Emily's gaze over his daughter's head and mouthing a silent thank you to the woman.

Emily merely nodded in acknowledgement from where she stood forlornly at the bottom of the front steps, observing the father-daughter reunion as an outsider looking in when she wanted desperately for her daughter to count her as family. Longing twisted painfully inside her.

Unaware of what had just transpired between the two adults, Hannah pulled back from her father's warm embrace and looked at him apprehensively. "I'm sorry," she said remorsefully. "I didn't mean to-"

"I know," Steve cut her off softly, giving her a fatherly look as he squeezed her shoulder.

Steve held the door open for Hannah and Emily, bringing up the rear as they all went inside. A very excited Golden Retriever was waiting in the entryway to greet them. It didn't take long for the dog to get gold hair all over Emily's black pants. That was why she had a black cat. At least Sergio's hair blended in.

"Come here, Alex." Hannah pulled the dog over to her by his collar and gave Emily an apologetic look. "Sorry."

"He's never met a stranger," Steve said jokingly. Seeing that his daughter was struggling to hold the exuberant dog back, he suggested she take him upstairs and put him in her room and change into pajamas while she was up there. "Then come back down," he called after her retreating back. "We need to talk."

"Can you lecture me tomorrow?" Hannah asked from the top of the staircase, trying in vain to delay the inevitable. "I'm really tired," she added with a loud yawn to really sell it.

Emily couldn't help but laugh softly at the nerve of the kid.

Steve looked exasperated. "You laugh now, but just wait until it's your turn." He shook his head and looked back up the staircase as he called out his response to Hannah. "Yeah, well, that's what happens when you stay out until 1:00 in the morning. You have five minutes to be back down here."

Hannah wasn't surprised by his answer, but she had to at least try.

While they waited on their daughter, Steve led the way into the family room and asked Emily if he could get her anything.

"No, thank you," Emily declined politely as she took a seat in an armchair in the back corner of the room.

"Where was she?" Steve asked as he took his usual seat on the sofa.

"The Metro station in Bethesda. She wanted to come home, but had no way of getting home or calling for help without her phone," Emily told him.

"I can't thank you enough for finding her," Steve said sincerely. "You didn't…tell her who you are, did you? It's okay if you did. She just isn't acting like she knows."

"No. It would be better if you were here for that. If it's too much for her, she'll need her father, not someone she barely knows," Emily said honestly. "But I'm going to tell her now – unless that's a problem?"

"No, it's no problem," Steve told her.

"Good." Emily said, not wanting to wait and risk angering Hannah by keeping the truth from her. She needed to be honest with her daughter now if she wanted to start building trust.

They heard a telltale creak on the stairs and knew the teenager was on her way back down. Emily took a deep breath as she tried to mentally prepare herself for what could be crushing rejection.

"I can't believe you called the cops," the girl said to her dad as she emerged from the bottom of the stairs. She thought Emily would have left and blushed when she saw the FBI agent sitting there, realizing the woman must have heard her. She looked at Emily with a sheepish expression. "No offense."

"Hannah, your father didn't call the police or the FBI," Emily started to explain, taking that as her opening. "He called me."

Hannah looked from Emily to her dad and back again, her brow furrowed in confusion. "I thought you were an FBI agent."

"I am with the FBI, but I'm not here in my official capacity as an agent," Emily continued to explain. She stood and took a few tentative steps toward her daughter, stopping when she was maybe four feet away and wringing her hands in front of her. She was normally in complete control of her body and could stop herself from displaying any signs of nerves, but her nerves in that moment went way beyond the usual nervousness she felt in awkward or uncomfortable situations. She had a lot riding on this. She took another deep breath. "I'm here because I'm your biological mother."

Hannah stared at Emily in shock, her mouth half-open. She _just_ found out she was adopted. She hadn't had time to wrap her head around that yet and hadn't even really begun to think about the two people out there somewhere who should have been her parents, but weren't. Now the woman who could have been her mom was in her living room, staring her in the face. The initial shock turned into awe as she locked eyes with the older woman and realized it was like looking into a mirror. Their eyes were mirror images of each other.

The girl had always wanted to look like her mom. Their coloring wasn't that different, but they didn't have any of the same facial features. She carefully examined pictures of her mom from when she was growing up whenever she was at her grandparents' house, comparing their noses and chins, never finding what she was looking for. Unlike her cousins whose baby pictures were nearly indistinguishable from the baby pictures of whichever parent they favored, Hannah didn't seem to have either of her parents' eyes, noses or smiles. Now that she knew she was adopted, it made perfect sense. Why would she look like her adoptive mother when they weren't actually related? With Emily, Hannah didn't have to look for similarities - they were jumping out at her. It was weird to think she looked like someone who was a virtual stranger, but there was no denying genetics.

Mother and daughter stared at each other for several long seconds. Emily was waiting anxiously for her daughter to say something, but realized after a long moment of stunned silence from the teenager that she would have to be the one to break the silence.

"I, uh, wanted you to know who I am," Emily said. "In case you ever need anything, whether it's answers to any questions you may have or a kidney." When she realized what she said, Emily felt like inserting her foot into her mouth. It was no wonder that particular organ was top of mind with an unsub who was performing illegal kidney surgeries on girls like Hannah, but she didn't want to think about her daughter needing a kidney, not even in the context of a half-joking comment she made in an attempt to lighten the mood a little.

"I don't need a kidney, but I do have questions – or I will," Hannah said with a frown. She was trying to think of all the things she wanted to ask Emily and felt a little like she was being put on the spot. "Is it – do I have to ask now? Or can I have some time to think about what I want to ask you?" She didn't know when – or if – she'd ever see her birth mother again. Was this a one-time thing?

"Take as much time as you need," Emily told her. "I'll be here for you whenever you're ready. I'd like to be there for you for more than that."

"Like for what?" Hannah asked bluntly.

Emily hesitated as she tried to read her daughter. She couldn't tell if the girl was receptive or not. What kind of a profiler was she if she couldn't get a read on her own kid?

Emily licked her lips as she decided what she could say that wouldn't scare her kid off. She needed to make it clear that Hannah was in control here. She wanted to build a relationship with her daughter, but she wouldn't force anything Hannah didn't want on her. "I want to be a part of your life if you'll let me. I want a chance to get to know you, and for you to be able to get to know me." She waited a beat, hoping her daughter would give her something – _anything_ \- but got nothing. "If you don't want that, I'll respect your decision. I spoke with your father this morning, and we agreed that what happens next is up to you."

Hannah glanced at her dad, looking for something - permission or validation? Emily wasn't sure.

"It's up to you, angel," Steve told his daughter. "What do you want to do?"

Hannah turned her attention back to Emily, but she was frowning uncertainly again. "I do want to get to know you. I'm just afraid."

"Of what?" Emily questioned gently.

"Of what my mom would say – my _real_ mom," Hannah said, referring to her adoptive mother. She was feeling torn between her loyalty to the woman who raised her and her rising curiosity about the woman she looked like.

Steve sighed sadly. "Hannah, your mom's…gone, and no one can ever take her place. But your biological mother is here. I knew your mom better than anyone, and I don't think she would have wanted you to miss out on an opportunity to have another person in your life that cares about you, at least not on her account. Do you?" He posed the question, knowing that in her heart Hannah knew the answer and it would assuage any unnecessary guilt she was feeling over a possible reunion with her biological mother.

"No," Hannah replied in a small voice.

"You can never have too many people who care about you," Steve said with conviction. "But if you're not ready for this, that's okay."

"No," Hannah said quickly. "I, uh, I want to."

Emily let out the breath she'd been holding as relief flooded her. For a minute there, she thought all of this was going to be too confusing for Hannah. She didn't know if she could have walked away from her daughter again and was glad she wouldn't have to.

"You're sure?" Steve questioned his daughter. He studied her, looking for any signs that she felt pressured or uncomfortable.

Hannah nodded, not wanting her dad to change his mind. "I'm sure."

"Okay, we'll set something up as soon as you're done being grounded," Steve told her. He smirked when the teenager's face fell. She didn't really think she was going to get off scot-free, did she?

Hannah sighed resignedly. "How long will that be?"

"A week," Steve said. "And before you complain, it really should be three. Don't make me regret giving you a break because of everything that's going on right now."


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N:** Thank you for reading and reviewing! This is a long one with some Emily and Rossi and then Emily and Hannah.

**Chapter 8**

Emily called Rossi from in front of Steve's townhouse to check in. She was sitting inside the parked Suburban and needed to know where to go. It was late – or rather early – and she didn't know whether the team had called it a night or was still working the case.

"Emily," he answered almost immediately. "How'd it go?" He asked her before she could ask about the case.

"It went," Emily said, feeling like a failure as a profiler and a mother since she couldn't get a read on her own kid. "She said she wants to get to know me."

"That's good, right?" Rossi checked, surprised by her reserved tone. He thought she'd be over the moon.

"It is," Emily replied hesitantly. "It's just…I don't know. She finds out she's adopted and she runs away. She finds out I'm her mother and nothing."

"She didn't react to it?" Rossi questioned.

"She was pretty shocked, understandably so, but I was expecting her to be angry or hurt or _something_. If she was, she didn't show it," Emily explained, shaking her head even though he couldn't see her.

"That could still come after she has time to process it," Rossi pointed out.

"That's true," Emily acknowledged. "_I_ needed time to process it, and I wasn't blindsided the way she was." She knew her fourteen year old had been blindsided twice in one night, first learning that she was adopted and then meeting Emily. It was possible that after her extreme reaction to the news she was adopted, the young teenager was too emotionally drained to deal with anything else.

"I was blindsided by Joy," Rossi offered. "You weren't here then, but she was following me, and I was convinced she was a stalker."

Emily laughed incredulously. "You're kidding?"

"I'm afraid not," Rossi told her. "I can't believe I've never told you this story."

"I would remember if you had," Emily said with certainty.

"She showed up at work," Rossi told her. "This was _after_ I had Penelope look into her and decided she was a crazed fan girl. I almost called Security."

"You didn't," Emily said.

"I said almost," Rossi emphasized. "When she finally told me who she really was, I didn't believe her. She already lied to me about who she was once. I left her standing there in the middle of the office and went to follow a lead on our case."

"Poor Joy," Emily murmured.

"I know, I know – not one of my proudest moments," Rossi admitted. "When I thought about it - I mean _really_ thought about it - I realized Hayden wouldn't have told me if she was pregnant. She knew I wasn't ready to have a family."

"Oh, I don't believe that for a second," Emily interjected. "You would have been an amazing father to Joy growing up if she'd given you that chance."

"You didn't know me thirty-four years ago," Rossi said skeptically. He didn't have a reputation as a playboy for nothing.

"I know you, and you are always there for the people you care about. It doesn't matter if it's an ex-stepdaughter who doesn't even want your help, an ailing ex-wife, or a member of the team. You've had my back more times than I can count. There is no doubt in my mind that you would have done the right thing by Joy," Emily said with conviction.

They were family – the whole team was family, but Rossi and Emily were especially close. He'd been something of a mentor to her back when she was still the newest member of the team. Although he came back to the team after she was already on it, he was one of the original founders of the BAU and had more experience than she did. David Rossi was the only one who had her back when her friend, Matthew, died, and she defied Hotch's orders to get justice for him. It hadn't felt like her own partner had her back or trusted her instincts, and Hotch hadn't gone to bat for her, but Rossi put himself on the line to help her. He'd become one of her most trusted confidantes, if not _the_ most trusted. She trusted his opinions and advice - even when they were unsolicited, as they often were. He didn't always mind his own business, but Emily knew it was only because he cared. He was the loving, supportive paternal figure she wished she'd had in her life growing up. She couldn't stand to hear him question whether he would have done the right thing by Joy if he'd known about her when she knew he would have.

"I'd like to think I would have, but we don't know that. We'll never know what I would have done because Hayden didn't tell me," Rossi said in a measured tone. "Which is why it took time for me to believe Joy was my daughter, and time for me to get my head on straight once I did. Finding out you have family out there that you didn't know about is a lot for anyone, let alone a kid."

"You're saying she needs time. But if she's upset or confused, talking about it would help," Emily reasoned.

"It will help," Rossi agreed easily. "_When_ she's ready."

Emily sighed loudly. She knew she didn't know her daughter well enough to predict how she would react, but the strangely calm reaction just seemed like the calm before the inevitable storm. She hated the idea that she was leaving the girl to weather the pending emotional storm alone when she'd caused it.

Rossi heard the sigh and chuckled softly. He couldn't help but be amused that Emily was so frustrated with her daughter for not talking about her feelings when getting Emily to open up was like cracking the code to the high security vault where her feelings were safely locked away. "Welcome to the club," he told her. "That's how the rest of us feel when you play it close to the vest, kiddo. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that you don't talk until you're ready. It sounds to me like your daughter's the same way."

"So much for nature versus nurture," Emily muttered ruefully. Profilers generally thought nurture was more important in shaping behavior, but genetics must have played a role in her daughter's behavior if she had Emily's poker face. "I was actually calling to check in on the case."

Rossi filled her in on the latest. The unsub was Dr. Charles Griffith. He was a surgeon – key word _was_. His own daughter, fifteen year old Caitlin Griffith, died six months ago. Caitlin was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia when she was only two, and had been in and out of remission her whole life, but it wasn't the leukemia that killed her – it was her kidneys.

After the funeral, Griffith returned to work for a few weeks, but there were complaints against him and he was now on a leave of absence. It was almost too easy to get a confession out of him. He was proud of what he was doing. In his mind, he was saving the lives of innocent girls like his daughter when the medical system failed them. There was just one problem – Griffith confessed to performing illegal kidney surgeries on _three_ girls, and they only had two victims. According to Griffith, he only did the third surgery that night.

Even though she knew Hannah was safe at home, it hit Emily like a sucker punch how easily the third victim could have been her own kid. She already knew her daughter fit the victimology, but she hadn't known the unsub was hunting for his next victim while Hannah was missing.

The team was searching the streets for the girl now. Emily told Rossi she'd be there soon, and started driving in the direction of the hospital.

* * *

Emily was surprised when Steve called her to see if she wanted to see Hannah on Saturday. Technically the girl was still grounded, but Steve thought Hannah was having a harder time with everything than she let on in front of Emily and decided it would be better for her to see her biological mother over the weekend when she would have time for any emotional fallout before going back to school on Monday.

Steve knew his kid's stoic act was just that – an act. She wouldn't be able to keep up the act forever. Hannah was still mad at him for not telling her that she was adopted – that much was obvious from the sullen attitude the girl had been copping all week. He didn't know what Hannah was thinking or feeling about Emily because she refused to talk to him about it, responding only with snotty comments like _oh, you want to talk _now_ after thirteen years of lies?_ Even though she wouldn't talk to him about any of it, he knew his kid well enough to know she was overwhelmed. Not knowing what else to do, he brought up the idea of finding a therapist she could talk to – a suggestion the teenager completely balked at.

At a standstill with his daughter, Steve finally gave up and set up a time for her to see Emily sooner rather than later. If she wouldn't talk to him or a therapist, maybe she would talk to Emily. He knew she had questions for the woman who gave birth to her and hoped the answers would help Hannah understand why her biological mother gave her up for adoption and start to make peace with it. But in case that backfired on him, as he knew it could, he didn't want the first time the girl spent time with her biological mother to be on a school night.

His logic made sense, and Emily jumped at the chance to see her daughter, but it made her wonder if it was a mistake for her to come back into the girl's life now. She knew going in that just because her kid was motherless didn't mean she would want or accept Emily as any kind of maternal influence – biological mother or not. Emily wasn't expecting immediate acceptance or an instant bond. She tried to prepare herself for the possibility of anger, even the possibility of being rejected by her own kid, but she hadn't been prepared for how hard it would be to know her kid was hurting and not know if she could help or if she was only making things worse.

With her daughter's precarious emotional state in mind, Emily thought she'd take her to brunch first and then they could go somewhere to talk. Brunch would give Emily a chance to build a rapport with the girl and try to connect on a personal level before they delved into the sensitive topic of Hannah's adoption. She found it awkward to ask for permission to take her own kid to brunch, but ran her plan by Steve anyway.

Apparently Steve didn't tell their daughter the plan because the first thing Hannah asked when she got in Emily's car on Saturday morning was what they were doing. A little taken aback by the question since she thought Steve would have told her, Emily told her kid that she'd made brunch reservations at a brunch hot spot in Dupont Circle. Hannah had heard of the trendy restaurant, but had never been and seemed excited to try it.

"And then we can go somewhere to talk," Emily added cautiously.

"What are we going to be doing during brunch? Sitting there eating in silence?" Hannah asked dryly. She wasn't trying to be rude. She was nervous about spending time with her birth mother for the first time ever and defaulted to covering her discomfort with sarcasm.

Emily glanced at the teenager in her passenger seat, trying to gauge whether she meant anything by it or was just being sarcastic. There was no challenging glint in her eyes and no defiant tilt to her chin, but there was a small smirk playing on the girl's lips. Sarcasm it was. She raised her eyebrows at her teenage daughter. "I thought you might have some questions that you'd rather not ask in the middle of a crowded restaurant, but if not…" She trailed off and shrugged as if to say it was up to Hannah.

"Oh," Hannah said, blushing as she realized Emily was right. "I do." She had a lot of questions, but the biggest one was why – why her birth mother gave her up, why her birth mother didn't want her. It was the question keeping her up at night. When she was lying in bed at night trying to sleep, the teenager thought of different reasons a mother might have for not keeping her baby, and none of the reasons she came up with made her feel any better. She was almost afraid to find out the real reason, but she thought knowing had to be better than always wondering.

Hannah knew she shouldn't care. So what if Emily gave her up? She didn't even know Emily, and she had parents who loved her. She didn't need another parent. But, for some reason, she just couldn't shake the feeling of rejection. It was a completely foreign feeling for the beloved only child whose adoptive parents had always doted on her, and Hannah didn't really know how to deal with it so she wasn't dealing with it at all. Instead, she just shut down emotionally.

"If you don't want to go anywhere else, I can just take you home after brunch and we can talk there," Emily offered kindly as she turned her attention back to the road, understanding that the girl might be more comfortable talking about something that could be triggering for her in her own home.

"Uh." Hannah hesitated, shifting uncomfortably in the passenger seat. "My dad's at home. I don't want to hurt his feelings, but I kind of want to know who my father is."

Emily's hands tightened on the steering wheel. She knew going into this that there was a good chance her daughter would ask about Ian Doyle and had been dreading answering. How did she tell Hannah that her father had done terrible things? How could she possibly explain what she was doing with Doyle to a teenager in a way she could understand? Some of the people Emily worked with didn't even understand. How could she hope a child would ever understand?

"We can always go back to my condo after brunch," was all Emily said in that moment. She was going to delay telling Hannah who her father was for as long as possible – at least until after brunch. She wanted to enjoy her kid for a little while before inviting the inevitable judgment for what she'd done - being with Doyle - as part of her job. She knew it would hurt if her own kid looked at her the way Derek Morgan and Spencer Reid did sometimes when the subject of Doyle came up.

Hannah merely nodded her agreement in a subdued manner as she toyed with the gold heart-shaped pendant on the necklace she was wearing. It was a nervous habit and a dead giveaway to the profiler that her kid was uncomfortable. Emily wished her daughter wasn't so uncomfortable with her, but knew it was to be expected since the girl didn't really know her.

"Did you have a good week?" Emily asked, resorting to small talk in an attempt to change the subject and hopefully get the kid to come out of the shell she'd retreated back into a little bit.

"Well, I was grounded so it wasn't great," Hannah answered ruefully.

"Ah, well, you can't really blame your dad for wanting to keep you close after your disappearing act," Emily said.

"Not you, too," Hannah said with a groan. She'd been looking for sympathy, but clearly wouldn't be getting it from Emily. "My dad already lectured me."

Emily glanced at the kid out of the corner of her eye in amusement. "That wasn't a lecture."

"It could turn into one," Hannah replied warily.

"Yeah, well, do it again and it will," Emily told her daughter without thinking. She had no idea where that came from – it just slipped out. She didn't think she was in any position to make threats when she had _just_ met her daughter - and she was sure the teenager would agree. She knew it wasn't much of a threat, but still…she couldn't go from the first real conversation she'd ever had with her daughter to diving right in and lecturing her. She didn't want to overstep when their relationship was so new.

The profiler knew that night could have ended very differently. She was glad Hannah missed the last train home from Bethesda because the girl would have been within the geographic profile if she'd made it back to Washington. And if the unsub had seen her fourteen year old walking the streets of D.C. alone late at night…well, Emily didn't want to think about what could have happened, but she was acutely aware just how close her daughter came to being in real danger. It could have very easily been her kid recovering in the hospital right now instead of Callie Stevens. Callie was Griffith's third and final victim. He'd taken her during the same timeframe that Hannah had been missing. If her presence in Hannah's life were already established, Emily would have had something to say about the teenager putting herself in danger. But for now, she just smiled nervously at the girl, hoping to pass it off as a playful threat.

Hannah glanced at her birth mother with wide eyes before deciding the woman wasn't really serious. "I'm not planning on it…unless there's something else everyone's lying to me about."

"I've never lied to you," Emily protested with a sharp look at the girl. The bitterness in her daughter's voice bothered her.

"You haven't had time to lie to me yet. You've only known me for, like, a week," Hannah countered.

"If you're waiting for me to lie to you, you're going to be waiting a long time," Emily told her kid calmly. She wasn't surprised to have her absence from the first thirteen years of Hannah's life thrown in her face. She fully expected to get some flak for that. She could take whatever the girl threw at her. She even thought she deserved it to a certain extent.

"You did tell me you were just an FBI agent," Hannah pointed out.

"I never said just," Emily said defensively. "And I'm sorry if I didn't think that outside of a closed Metro station was the right place to tell you who I was."

"That's fair," Hannah acknowledged begrudgingly.

"I know trust has to be earned, and I'm going to do everything I can to earn yours," Emily said. "I'll never lie to you, Hannah."

Hannah looked at Emily in surprise. She was used to adults expecting her to trust and respect them for no other reason than their age.

"What?" Emily questioned, feeling her daughter's eyes on her.

"Nothing," Hannah said, quickly looking away again.

As they entered Dupont Circle, Hannah continued looking out the window, people watching. The neighborhood drew a diverse crowd. There was something for everyone - used bookshops, art galleries, clothing boutiques, restaurants and bars. There were always people playing chess, reading, or walking dogs near the marble fountain in Dupont Circle proper.

Emily found a parking spot a block away from the restaurant. As they walked, Hannah looked longingly in the windows of the chic boutiques they passed. Emily took note of it, thinking maybe a shopping trip would be in order next time they hung out - that was assuming there would be a next time.

"Do you live here?" Hannah asked as they walked.

"I live close," Emily answered. "I can walk here from my place." She was renting in the same neighborhood where she almost bought a row house years ago. She liked the area, but she didn't want to be on any of the busy main streets. She lived close enough to walk to the restaurants and shops, but far enough away that the bustling nightlife didn't bother her.

They beat the crowd to the brunch hot spot. It would have a line of people out the door waiting thirty to forty-five minutes for a table - and the bottomless mimosas - closer to noon, but they got there at 10:30 and were seated right away.

Looking at the tables of harried young couples with babies and toddlers and groups of women in their thirties who looked like they'd come straight from a yoga class, Emily knew she would have stuck out like a sore thumb if she'd worn her normal tailored slacks or her gun. She had shed her self-imposed FBI uniform in favor of dark wash jeans, a tan turtleneck sweater, and her black leather jacket. Her attire was deliberately casual – an attempt to ensure her daughter saw her as a person and not just an FBI agent. She had noticed the girl's preoccupation with her gun and badge and left her Glock at home this time even though she felt naked and exposed without it.

The waitress came over to take their drink orders almost as soon as they sat down. The waitress was an older woman with curly grey hair in a bun and a matronly disposition. Hannah ordered a vanilla iced coffee, and awkwardness ensued when the waitress looked to Emily for permission to serve the young teenager coffee. With Hannah's strong resemblance to Emily, it was no wonder the waitress assumed correctly that they were mother and daughter, but, of course, the woman had no way of knowing that their circumstances were…_unique_ to say the least.

Unfortunately, Hannah picked up on the waitress' hesitation to take her coffee order and the way she turned to Emily for permission. In her opinion, whether she drank coffee or not was none of Emily's business. Her birth mother couldn't just come back after thirteen years and change the rules her dad had for her. To be fair, Emily hadn't actually said or done anything to make Hannah think she would do that, but the teenager didn't like the idea that Emily _could_ say no and the waitress would listen to her. The mere possibility of being told no filled the fourteen year old with childish indignation.

"I can have coffee," Hannah said with a fierce expression, the fire in her eyes practically daring her birth mother to say otherwise. "I drink coffee all the time," she exaggerated.

Emily shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "It's fine," she told the waitress with an apologetic smile. "And I'll have herbal tea."

An awkward silence fell over the table once the waitress left with their drink orders in hand. Emily silently cursed the waitress for causing this completely unnecessary tension. The elephant in the room would have been there regardless, but after that exchange, it felt like the elephant had pulled up a chair and joined them for brunch. Emily knew she needed to act quickly to smooth things over even though she hadn't actually done anything wrong.

Emily tilted her head to the side slightly and gave her kid an imploring look. "Don't give me that look. I didn't say anything about the coffee," she pointed out in her own defense. "It's not my fault the waitress has a problem with supplying teenagers with caffeine."

Hannah lost her defiant glare almost immediately. When Emily put it that way, she knew it wasn't really fair to hold the waitress' actions against her birth mother. Emily had never actually said no or given her any indication that she disapproved of her drinking coffee. Hannah's cheeks flushed with embarrassment as she realized she had gotten angry over nothing. The girl lifted her menu and pretended to study it intently in an attempt to hide her red face and sheepish expression.

"Maybe she shouldn't be a waitress in a place that serves coffee then," Hannah muttered quietly, staring hard at the menu to avoid Emily's piercing gaze.

Emily studied her kid from the opposite side of the table, smiling when she realized Hannah wasn't really reading the menu, only hiding behind it. It was childish behavior and reminded Emily how young her daughter still was.

Feeling uncomfortably like she was under a microscope, Hannah finally looked up from the menu. For the second time since meeting Emily, Hannah felt like she was looking in a mirror when her eyes met her birth mother's eyes. It was a strange sensation, and she wondered if it would ever _not_ be weird for her to look at Emily and see herself in the older woman.

Emily was glad her kid was at least looking at her again and continued the difficult task of single-handedly chipping away at the wall of tension between them with little to no help from the teenager. "There was a time when no one got between me and my coffee either," she told her kid lightly. "I quit caffeine," she explained, "but I started drinking coffee when I was your age. We were living in Italy so I kind of had to. They don't mess around with coffee. That's where my caffeine addiction started. It didn't stunt my growth so I think you're genetically predisposed to be tall regardless of your caffeine intake."

"Wait, you lived in Italy?" Hannah said in an awed tone, her earlier embarrassment quickly forgotten. "That's _so_ cool."

"Yeah." Emily suppressed a triumphant grin as she succeeded in getting her moody teenager talking again – and not just talking but genuinely interested. "My mom was posted in Rome. She's an ambassador. We moved around a lot because of her postings. Believe me, it's not actually that cool to always be the new kid trying to fit in."

Emily thought she saw a brief flash of understanding in the girl's eyes, which was strange because Hannah had only moved once in her life and her new house wasn't even ten miles away from her old house. Before she could read anything more into it, Hannah asked where else she'd lived.

Emily took her daughter through the long list of countries she'd lived in, both growing up and as an adult, stopping to answer the girl's questions about each of them. Hannah showed the most interest in Italy, France, and England. She was one of the only ones in her friend group who had never been to Europe and really wanted to go. They hadn't really been on any big trips since her mom got sick.

There were still a few countries left on the list when the waitress brought their food - chicken and waffles for Hannah and an omelette for Emily. They continued chatting as they ate. Emily found it easier to make conversation now that she'd accidentally stumbled on a topic that captured and held her daughter's interest.

Hannah had always lived in the general D.C. area and found her birth mother's life fascinating. The woman had lived all over the world and was extremely well traveled. She was so cosmopolitan and worldly.

When Emily casually mentioned moving to London to run the Interpol office there, Hannah thought it sounded exciting and important even though she didn't fully understand what Emily's job was or what Interpol did. For some reason, it was suddenly of the utmost importance to Hannah to impress the woman so she didn't want to admit to not really knowing what Interpol was.

Of course, Hannah knew Emily was an FBI agent now since that was how the woman introduced herself. She was imagining her birth mother as Sandra Bullock in _Miss Congeniality_. The young teenager wasn't allowed to watch the darker movies featuring FBI characters that would have given her a more accurate idea of what her mother actually did. If Emily had known what her daughter was thinking, she would have been torn between amusement and horror.

To the teenager, her birth mother's job was a lot cooler than her dad's boring desk job. The paperwork she'd seen her dad bring home and the business calls she'd overheard had Hannah convinced that a lawyer's work was mind-numbingly dull.

Although she knew Emily was her mother, Hannah didn't see the older woman as a mom, and not just because she already had a mom and it would have felt like a betrayal to the woman who raised her. Emily just didn't seem like a mom to her, at least not any of the moms Hannah had ever known. The woman was so unlike Hannah's adoptive parents, her aunts and uncles, or any of her friends' parents. Emily was actually pretty cool. Hannah didn't know her that well yet, but she just couldn't picture the woman who lived such an exciting life doing anything so mundane as attending a high school volleyball game or driving carpool.

The fourteen year old didn't see how she would fit into Emily's life or how Emily would fit into hers. She didn't even know Emily existed a week ago, but now that she knew, Hannah desperately wanted to be worthy of the woman's time and attention. The girl kept asking Emily questions, wanting to keep the focus off of her since her own life seemed boring in comparison. She couldn't imagine Emily would want to hear about school or volleyball.

In reality, Emily wanted to know everything about her daughter, but Hannah wasn't giving her a chance to ask any questions of her own. Emily didn't realize that was by design. Hannah's interest in her seemed genuine so Emily had no reason to question her motives. Emily was just happy the teenager was engaged in the conversation and seemed to be having a good time with her.

"Out of all the places you've lived, what's your favorite?" Hannah asked curiously.

"I like London, but D.C. is home," Emily told her. "And after moving around so much it's really good to be home."

"You'd really rather live here than Paris?" Hannah said in disbelief. The teenage girl had a romanticized view of the city of love with its legendary shopping and food.

Emily suppressed a shudder as she thought of the last time she'd lived in Paris. She was legally 'dead' and had been miserable and alone. Being there after losing the life she'd built in Washington and the people who had become family to her when all she wanted was to go home had effectively ruined the city for her. "There's no place like home," was all she said in response.

"Do you speak French?" Hannah asked seemingly randomly.

"Uh-huh," Emily said with a little laugh as she wondered where her daughter was going with this. "Why?"

"Like, fluently?" Hannah checked, not bothering to answer Emily's question.

"Oui," Emily replied with a dry expression.

"Would you maybe look at my paper for me?" Hannah asked shyly. She didn't think the woman would want to help her with her homework, but she could really use the help and had been working up the courage to ask. Her French teacher was tough, and a lot of students who usually got A's were struggling to maintain a B in the class, Hannah included. "It's due next week, and my teacher takes off a _whole_ letter grade for every mistake."

"You're taking French?" Emily clarified.

"Unfortunately," Hannah replied. "The teacher's the worst. No one in the class has an A."

"I can help you," Emily offered eagerly, knowing ninth grade French would be a breeze for her.

"Thank you," Hannah said appreciatively, her eyes conveying her gratitude.

"It's no problem, I'm happy to do it," Emily told her, secretly thrilled to have an excuse to spend more time with her daughter and on an activity like helping her with her homework – something that seemed pretty mom-like to Emily. "So what's your favorite subject? Obviously not French." She asked with a smile, finally able to get in a question of her own.

"English. I like to read," Hannah answered.

The rest of brunch was spent comparing notes on different books. Emily was scandalized when she learned her daughter had never read anything by Kurt Vonnegut, but there were some historical fiction books they'd both read and liked. Emily was glad to have found something she had in common with her daughter other than DNA. Hannah seemed to like anything that was set during the Holocaust. She was reading _The Diary of Anne Frank_ and promised to read _Mother Night_ when she finished it.

By the time they finished eating and the waitress brought their check, the initial awkwardness had all but faded, but that all changed when the waitress brought Emily's credit card back and they left the restaurant. As they got back in Emily's car, they both knew the time was rapidly approaching for the emotionally heavy-hitting topic of Hannah's adoption.

Emily thought she had a pretty good idea of what her daughter's questions would be. There were universal questions everyone who was adopted had, and they weren't easy questions - not for anyone.

Emily just hoped her answers wouldn't undo what little progress she'd made with her daughter that morning.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! This one is pretty much all Emily and Hannah. I'm trying really hard not to have chapters with just Emily and an OC, but this one was getting too long. The next chapter will be much more team focused and will have a decent amount of Reid.

**Chapter 9**

Emily unlocked the front door and held it open for her daughter. Hannah hung back awkwardly in the entryway, not sure what to do with herself as Emily entered the code to disable the alarm.

Hannah followed Emily as the woman ventured further into the condo. The teenager looked around curiously. Emily's condo was perfectly clean with none of the daily clutter that accumulated in the townhouse Hannah lived in with her dad. There were no shoes by the front door, no jackets thrown haphazardly over the back of the dark velvet sofa, and no notepad or stacks of paper littering the kitchen counter. The only thing that made the condo look lived in were the knickknacks – artwork hanging on the walls, Emily's collection of books filling the built-in bookshelf, a plant on the kitchen counter.

"Can I get you anything to drink?" Emily asked her daughter.

"Do you have Coke?" Hannah asked as she continued to trail after Emily.

Knowing she wouldn't have Coke, Emily noted the beverage choice for future reference as she opened the refrigerator to scan the contents. "Sorry, I only have water, milk or tea."

"Oh yeah, I forgot you gave up caffeine," Hannah said. "Water's…fine."

Emily heard the hesitation and slight catch in her daughter's voice and turned to her, following the girl's gaze to a drawing hanging on the open refrigerator door. Henry had given it to her when she moved back from London and had everyone over for a housewarming party. The crayon drawing was supposed to be of her, Henry and Michael. The boy always looked for the drawing when he was there so Emily had left it on the fridge even after all this time. "That's from my best friend's son," Emily explained. "Henry. He just turned ten."

"Oh," was all the girl said in response. Her eyes lingered on the second child – the baby - in the crayon drawing for a moment as she felt a sudden pang of jealousy. "Do you have kids?"

"Just you," Emily replied with an almost wistful expression.

The soft look of longing on her birth mother's face made Hannah uncomfortable. She wandered off into the living room, desperate to put some distance between herself and Emily.

When Emily joined Hannah in the living room, she found the girl sitting all the way over on one side of the couch with Sergio in her lap, purring as Hannah scratched his ears and murmured sweetly to him.

"I see you met Sergio," Emily observed with a smile as she joined her daughter on the couch, handing her a glass of ice water.

"Sergio?" Hannah said with a furrowed brow and a small frown. That was…different. She tried unsuccessfully to hide that she wasn't a fan of the name, but it was too late by the time she managed to school her features into a more neutral expression.

Emily wasn't offended. She knew Sergio wasn't a very common name in America, not for a cat or a person. What the American teenager didn't know was that it was a common name in Italy. "It's Italian," she offered in explanation, hiding a small smile.

"What would you have named me?" Hannah asked, wondering if Emily would have had some equally weird foreign name in mind for her.

"Elise," Emily told her with the same wistful expression from before. Since she hadn't decided what she was going to do until her phone call with Tsia toward the end of her pregnancy, she had chosen a name for her baby girl. "My mother's name is Elizabeth, and my grandmother's name was Evelyn. Our names…they all start with an E. I'm not very close with my mother, but I was close with my grandmother, and it started with her so I figured I'd keep that tradition alive."

It was silent as Emily let herself imagine for just a minute what her life would have been like if she kept her baby and raised her – if instead of barely knowing Hannah, Hannah was Elise Prentiss and Emily was the only mom she had ever known. Emily had never given into those thoughts before, knowing the what ifs and what could have been would drive her crazy. She knew the life she was imagining would have been shattered when Doyle escaped from prison. Instead of sitting next to her on the couch, her daughter could have been in an early grave right now.

"Elise. I like it," Hannah said with a pensive expression, pulling Emily out of her dark, depressing thoughts. "But if you ever have a son, maybe you should let your husband name him," the fourteen year old suggested seriously. She didn't think her birth mother should be allowed to name a boy if the woman thought Sergio was a good name. It might be Italian, but they weren't in Italy.

Emily couldn't help but grin at the serious expression on her daughter's face and the bluntness only a kid could get away with. The young teenager was just about at the age where she couldn't get away with it anymore, but Emily wasn't just anyone and wanted the girl to be able to be herself around her and say things she wouldn't say to a stranger, even if they didn't know each other that well yet.

Growing up in the world of politics where forced politeness between people who didn't even like each other was the norm, Emily was actually glad her kid didn't feel the need to be overly polite with her. She wanted to know what her daughter was really thinking, and not just about Sergio's name, but about everything.

"I should let my future husband name our nonexistent son?" Emily said in a slightly amused tone, knowing it was a moot point. There was no husband or son. There was only her daughter who wasn't subtle at all about her opinion of the name Sergio. "I'll keep that in mind for future reference."

Hannah blushed and offered her birth mother a sheepish smile as the woman's response made her realize how far-fetched that was.

The lighthearted exchange helped ease some of the tension that had been building back up between them from the moment brunch ended, but Emily knew the girl's questions wouldn't all be as easy as what she would have named her. Emily took a deep breath as she steeled herself for the reason they were there – the answers she'd promised to give her daughter. She knew what came next would define the nature of her relationship with her kid. She didn't want to push Hannah, but she knew she couldn't keep her there all afternoon or Steve would begin to think she'd kidnapped his daughter – brunch didn't take all day. If they were going to talk, they needed to do it before it got to be too late.

Emily turned so she was fully facing her daughter with her legs curled underneath her. "Did you just want to know if I would have named you something embarrassing like Hortense or Petronella?" She teased lightly as she started to slowly ease into the girl's real questions. They were the worst names Emily could come up with completely off the cuff, and she would be lying if she said she didn't enjoy the reaction she got out of her kid – a look that was truly priceless. Emily was only able to enjoy it for a second before getting serious and prompting gently, "Or do you have any other questions for me?"

The teenager visibly stiffened, her pale hand stilling on Sergio's head. For a second, Emily thought the girl wasn't going to say anything and then a single word came out of her mouth.

"Why?" Hannah asked. It was a general why that encompassed why Emily gave her up, why Emily didn't want her, why her birth mother wasn't her mom. She had a really great mom and wouldn't trade the time she had with her for anything, but it still hurt to think of her birth mother not wanting her.

Emily knew what Hannah was really asking. She could hear the uncertainty and brittle need in the girl's voice. If she was going to be a part of her kid's life now, Hannah needed to understand the past and why Emily hadn't been there from day one. There would be no steps forward in their tentative relationship until she made Hannah understand.

Emily started by telling the girl who she was really working for when she got pregnant and what the taskforce she was a part of did at a very high level.

"So you were like James Bond?" Hannah said, awed almost in spite of herself.

James Bond? Emily knew Henry saw the BAU profilers as heroes on par with Captain America. He had adorably dressed up like Reid for Halloween one year, he'd drawn various team members wearing superhero capes, and, out of both his parents, it was always JJ he wanted for Career Day at his elementary school. The difference was that Henry saw JJ as his mom first and a hero second.

Emily was hoping that eventually her daughter might come to see her as another mom – not a replacement for the mom who raised her, but as someone she could go to in the future when she needed a mom. As flattering as it was that her kid was comparing her with the most famous fictional secret agent out there, Emily didn't want to be Hannah's hero. She just wanted to be her mom. She didn't think the hero worship the girl seemed to be developing for her would help Hannah see her in the light Emily wanted to be seen in and wanted to squash it before it got out of control.

Emily tilted her head to the side slightly and stared at Hannah with a mock-offended look on her face. "Are you really comparing me with a British man?" She decided to give her kid a hard time about the comparison as a way to subtly discourage her from making it again, even in her own mind.

"A very badass British man," Hannah said helpfully.

Emily let out a little laugh. "Nice save, kid, but I'm no James Bond."

Emily went back to describing the taskforce and the work they did, telling the girl she'd been undercover for almost two years, but leaving out what the undercover assignment was for the time being.

"I was afraid you'd be in danger because of my job," Emily said. She watched as in a split second her kid went from looking at her with awe to looking at her with scorn.

"That's what you're going with? That I would have been in danger?" Hannah scoffed in disbelief, getting angry because it was easier to be angry than hurt. "You could save everyone else from some of the worst people in the world, but you couldn't keep me safe?"

Emily knew the missing piece of the puzzle – Ian Doyle – was necessary to give the girl a complete picture of the danger she would have been in. "I couldn't keep you safe because of who your father is. Earlier you said you wanted to know who he is. I can give you answers, and I will, but you're not going to like them," she warned her child. "Are you sure you're ready for that?"

Hannah gave her birth mother an annoyed look. It was the same look millions of teenagers gave their parents over little everyday things, including being treated like a child when they felt like they were already grown up. "Don't talk to me like I'm some little kid that needs to be protected. Just tell me."

"Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you," Emily said in a resigned tone. She was worried about what the truth would do to her daughter, but she knew she owed her nothing less than that. "Your father was an international arms dealer. The taskforce I was a part of helped with the case against him and his eventual arrest. He was our target when I was undercover."

Emily didn't see any reason to elaborate on that. Hannah didn't need to know how much death and destruction the attacks Doyle supplied the weapons for had caused or how many people Doyle had personally killed. And she definitely didn't need to know the things her father had done to her mother. Emily suppressed a shudder as memories of Doyle washed over her in a chilling wave.

Hannah stared at her birth mother with wide eyes, her mouth hanging open. "So he was…a criminal," she said with a frown. Her expression softened with a combination of understanding and sympathy, both of which were a little premature. "Did he…did he rape you?"

It would have been so easy for Emily to say yes and cling onto that understanding, but she wasn't going to lie now, even if the truth would transform the newfound understanding she saw in her daughter's eyes into inevitable judgment.

She'd thought about how to explain her complicated relationship with Ian Doyle to the impressionable young teenager, but she didn't think there was a good way to explain.

As one of few females in law enforcement, there were times when Emily Prentiss was expected to flirt with male suspects for information. Even Hotch, who was as by the book as they come, had expected it...no matter how it made her feel. It was a tactic – one of many at their disposal, and never her go-to strategy, but one that couldn't always be avoided. Emily hated doing it, but she was good at it.

It was different with Ian Doyle though. With him, it wasn't just harmless flirting at that bar where they met in Boston. It was so much more than that. It was a two-year relationship. Emily couldn't live with him for almost two years and not feel anything for him. What she felt wasn't love, but it wasn't only the disgust and contempt she should have felt for someone who had done all the things he did. Even though she was just doing her job, it definitely wasn't strictly professional.

Emily blew out her breath. "No, he didn't rape me. My job was to get close to him, and I…I did what I had to do," she said, struggling to explain it to a teenager. She was going to leave it at that if Hannah let her.

Getting the information they needed to arrest Doyle had stopped attacks and saved countless lives, but that didn't mean Emily felt good about what she had to do to earn his trust. Her teenage daughter didn't need to know all the intimate details of her relationship with Doyle. What kid wanted to think about how they were conceived anyway?

For her part, the fourteen year old was a little scandalized, but at the moment she was far more concerned with how contaminated her gene pool was from her father's genes than with what her birth mother did with the man. The blood running through her veins was poisoned with his blood. She shuddered at the thought. What if she was like him?

The profiler read the fear in the teenager's body language, misinterpreting it as fear of the danger Doyle's existence posed to her when really it was fear that she was like him because she had his genes. "He's dead, honey," Emily said as gently as possible. Hannah didn't know Doyle, but he was still her father. "Any danger you would have been in because of who he was died with him."

"Would he have hurt me?" Hannah asked in a small voice.

Emily frowned as she considered her answer, her heart constricting at how young, vulnerable, and hurt her child sounded in that moment. "If he'd known about you, he would have loved you," she said, not wanting Hannah to ever question that. "But-"

"He didn't know about me?" Hannah interrupted.

Emily shook her head. "No. The key to ensuring your safety was making sure no one knew about you."

"Your family doesn't know about me?" Hannah questioned, frowning slightly.

"No one knew," Emily told her. "When you were born, your father was being interrogated in a North Korean prison." She swallowed as she thought about what she had to say to make sure her daughter understood that the danger she would have been in was very real. Emily didn't want to scare the girl or put thoughts of torture in her head, but it was too important that Hannah understand. "Torture wasn't working. If the North Koreans found out about you, they would have used you to get him to talk, and I wasn't about to let that happen."

Later, once she had time to really think about it, Hannah would question if Emily not telling anyone about her was really to keep her safe or if a part of the spy-turned-FBI agent was ashamed of her because of who her father was. And then she would begin to wonder if her adoptive parents would have wanted her if the identity of her criminal father had been in the fine print of the adoption. But in that moment, the teenager was too preoccupied with finding out her father was a criminal so she just took Emily at her word.

When the woman warned her she wouldn't like the answers, Hannah just thought her father hadn't wanted her – something she'd been trying to prepare herself to hear since she the night she found out she was adopted and that Emily was her birth mother. To Hannah, it seemed obvious her birth parents hadn't wanted her. If they had, why would they have given her up? Hannah hadn't had enough time to dream up the perfect father and create a fantasy in her head the way so many children who were adopted did, but she had thought for a minute there that maybe he worked with Emily and had an equally cool job. She would never in a million years have imagined her father as a hardened criminal rotting away in prison. The crushing reality of a father who was arrested by an antiterrorism taskforce and then tortured for information was not something Hannah ever could have prepared for.

"I was a baby," Hannah said forlornly. The protected only child couldn't believe anyone would use a baby, no matter what crimes the baby's father had committed.

"That wouldn't have mattered to them," Emily told her. "So I did what I had to do to give you a life where no one would ever be able to make the connection between you and your father. And in doing that, I missed out on the opportunity to be part of your life."

Emily was trying to wrap up the story there. She thought there was a difference between lying and holding back on the girl. There were some things a child didn't need to know about their parents. Emily subconsciously placed her hand over the exact spot where Doyle had branded her, dropping her hand as soon as she realized what she was doing. Her scars, emotional and physical, were not something she would ever want her child to see.

Emily had also avoided mentioning Declan for multiple reasons, but the biggest was that knowing about her half-brother wouldn't just affect Hannah. It would affect Declan, too – assuming Hannah would want to meet him. Emily had already turned one child's life upside down that week and was still trying to pick up the pieces from that. She didn't know if she wanted to turn another child's life upside down. She rationalized her decision, telling herself Hannah needed time to adjust before they added any other new family members in. A new mother figure was enough for now.

"Until now," Hannah said, referring to Emily's presence in her life.

"Until now," Emily agreed with a tentative smile. "I told you before I'd like to be a part of your life if you'll let me. What do you want, Hannah?"

"I…" Hannah trailed off, realizing she didn't know what she wanted from Emily. She was having a hard time reconciling the cool older woman who had a kick ass job with the birth mother who couldn't keep her safe. After spending time with Emily, Hannah's feelings toward the woman were more conflicted than ever. "I still want to get to know you," she said uneasily, "but I need to go now."

Emily's heart sank as she looked at her daughter helplessly. The girl looked pale and lost and not at all certain about what she wanted. Emily wasn't surprised by it, but it wasn't the reaction she wanted or the answer she was looking for. She knew it could have been worse – instead of the lukewarm response, her kid could have pushed her away completely. She forced a tight smile and nodded, not sure what else she could do.

Hannah got up from the couch so abruptly it woke Sergio, who had moved from her lap to the space in between Emily and Hannah earlier. The girl was halfway to the front door before Emily realized she was just going to leave.

"Hannah, wait," Emily called after the girl's retreating back, getting up to follow her.

The girl pretended not to hear her and actually sped up.

Emily stared in disbelief. Did her fourteen year old really think she could run from her? She was an FBI agent! She caught up to the teenager in seconds and gently grabbed her arm. "Hey, stop."

Hannah knew Emily was behind her before she felt the woman's hand on her arm, physically stopping her and turning her around. Her birth mother's grip was gentle but firm, and she didn't even try to pull away because she knew she wouldn't be able to. Instead, she just stood there stiffly, refusing to meet her birth mother's gaze.

"My dad said if I wanted to leave, I could," Hannah mumbled obstinately. She really wanted to get out of there before Emily asked her anything else she wasn't ready to answer. She didn't know what she wanted. She didn't even know how to feel about all this. She thought she would be leaving with answers, and instead she was just leaving with more questions. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts because they were all over the place at the moment.

Emily stared at her kid, waiting for her to meet her eyes, but she never did. "You can," Emily agreed reluctantly, trying to hide her disappointment in how the day was ending. "I'll drive you or you can call your dad to pick you up, but you can't just leave."

"I'm fourteen, not four. I can walk or take the Metro," Hannah told her.

"You can, but you're not going to - not on my watch," Emily replied. "I don't think I need to remind you that the last time you just left, you were missing for hours. Come on, I'll take you home."

* * *

After a short standoff in Emily's entryway, Emily had her sullen fourteen year old in her car. The drive to the townhouse Steve and Hannah lived in was uncomfortably silent.

As Emily went over all her interactions with Hannah in her head, analyzing them for clues as to how to fix things with the girl, she remembered something. In a last-ditch attempt to not leave things like this with her daughter, she asked if Hannah still needed help with her French paper. Emily could tell Hannah really wanted to say no, but she seemed to realize she did need help. She suppressed a triumphant smirk as her kid reluctantly asked her to come in and look at the paper.

Steve was watching college football in the living room when they walked in. "Hey, sweetheart, how was brunch?" He said without looking, his eyes glued to the television screen. When he finally turned around, he looked surprised to see Emily. "Oh - hi, Emily," he added in a neutral tone with a questioning glance at his daughter.

"Hey, Dad," Hannah said, shifting uncomfortably. "Um, Emily was just going to look at my French paper for me. You know, the one that's due next week?"

Steve shifted his inquisitive gaze to Emily. "You know French?"

"Yes," Emily answered warily as she wondered if she should have asked permission before offering to help the girl with her homework.

Steve offered her a small smile. "That'll come in handy. Her teacher's really tough. It's a bunch of kids in all honors classes, and none of them are doing well. I don't know a word of French so I'm no help."

"You wouldn't have been able to help with Spanish either," Hannah pointed out wryly.

Steve chuckled good-naturedly. "I took four years of Spanish in high school. I just don't remember any of it," he admitted for Emily's benefit. He raised his eyebrows at his daughter and teased lightly, "Let's see how much French you remember when you're my age."

It was still awkward between Steve and Emily, but they were both trying to get along for Hannah's sake. Steve was being cautious and trying to take things slow and see how Hannah did with everything, but he'd decided he wasn't going to deny his teenage daughter a positive female influence - someone she could go to for 'girl stuff' she wouldn't come to him about. Hannah had already gone to her aunt, his older sister, instead of him a few times, but each time the girl had been embarrassed and seemed awkward and uncomfortable.

With his blessing, Hannah led Emily up to her bedroom. The profiler couldn't help looking around the teenage girl's room to try to figure out who she was, what she liked, what her hobbies were. Sometime between the days when she begged her dad for a pink treehouse and now, Hannah's favorite color had changed. That was reflected in the Bohemian-looking purple, blue, and teal quilt covering her bed and the dark purple rug thrown over the white carpet – though Emily could barely see the rug because of all the clothes that hadn't made it to the hamper and instead were strewn over the floor. A black backpack was also discarded haphazardly on the floor, textbooks and binders spilling out of it. Apparently tidiness was not genetic.

"It's kind of messy," Hannah acknowledged apologetically with a half-hearted shrug. She hadn't been expecting to have anyone in her room, and there was nothing she could do about it now.

While the teenager dug her French binder out of her backpack and searched for the paper, Emily continued looking around. Her eyes roamed over the titles of the books on Hannah's bookshelf. She moved over to the bulletin board hanging over Hannah's desk and took in the calendar with all the girl's volleyball games, a ticket stub from _Hamilton_, and an invitation to an upcoming birthday party. There was a single strip of three pictures that looked like it had come from a photo booth. In each of the three pictures, Hannah was with another girl her age and they were both wearing nice dresses. They were smiling in two of the three pictures and making funny faces in the last one.

Hannah brought the first draft of her paper over to her desk and stood there awkwardly. "You can sit if you want," the teenager offered with a glance at the desk chair.

Emily sat down at Hannah's desk to read the paper.

"Pay special attention to the grammar," Hannah told her. Cognizant that Emily wasn't one of the parents she'd grown up with and she couldn't just expect her help like she would if it were her dad helping her with algebra, the girl quickly added a soft, "Please."

Hannah's paper wasn't bad, especially for a fourteen year old in freshman French class. Emily only found two small grammar errors, which she pointed out to her daughter.

Hannah groaned. "I would have gotten a C," she said with a dramatic sigh as she proceeded to fix the mistakes with Emily's help.

The teenager warmed back up to Emily a little bit as they worked. She was really grateful for the woman's help, and knew she couldn't continue giving the woman the cold shoulder when Emily was helping her.

"Thank you _so_ much," Hannah said appreciatively, feeling a little embarrassed about how she treated Emily earlier.

"I told you it's no problem," Emily reminded her with a smile. "Where's your phone? I'll give you my number so you can call me if you need help with your homework. Or anything else." She held her daughter's gaze, wanting her to know she meant the 'or anything else.'

Hannah pulled her iPhone out of her back pocket and entered Emily's number, texting the woman so she would have her number, too.

Emily didn't want to leave without knowing she would see her daughter again soon. Knowing she couldn't push too hard or Hannah would start to shut down on her again, she asked if the girl wanted to go to brunch again next weekend.

"I have to ask my dad," Hannah told her birth mother in a neutral tone. It was true, but she was also using it as an excuse because she didn't want to commit to anything yet. She wanted to think about it and figure out how she felt and what she wanted before agreeing to see Emily again so soon.

"Oh. Okay," Emily said, her heart sinking at the deflection. "Just let me know."

"I will," Hannah promised.

The girl walked her birth mother out, thanking her again for her help.

Their goodbye in the entryway of the townhouse felt a little like the end of an awkward first date – clearly _not_ in the romantic sense, but in the sense that it was a brand new relationship and Emily felt just as awkward and tentative and unsure. She desperately wanted to hug her kid and started to reach out for the girl, but quickly retracted her hand and stopped herself. Sticking with the first date analogy, her daughter hadn't even agreed to a second date so Emily was going to wait on showing any physical affection that might be unwanted or unwelcome. She didn't want to come on too strong in this newfound relationship. At the end of the day, Emily was trying to build a mother-daughter relationship from scratch with a kid she barely knew, and it would take time for things between them to start to feel more natural.

She just hoped her daughter would call.

**A/N:** Thanks again for reading. I'd love to hear what you think and if there's anything you want to see or any characters you want to see more of.

I hope the name discussion between Emily and Hannah didn't offend anyone. Sergio isn't a very common name in the US. I like it, but I thought it might be something an American teenager would think was different. Hortense and Petronella both came up in a Google search on names so I blame the Internet for those.

I don't believe we ever learned Emily's grandmother's name so Evelyn is made up. I originally considered having Emily choose a name for the adoptive parents to use and it occurred to me then that both Emily and Elizabeth Prentiss had 'E' names so I was going to follow that in this story as well.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 10**

The West End Library at 23rd and L Streets NW had just opened a year ago and was one of the nicest libraries in D.C. It was also the only library that had a copy of a newer research journal featuring a study on Alzheimer's in schizophrenics. With a cup of coffee in his hand, Spencer Reid navigated up to the section where the publication would be.

Reid was a little surprised to see a young teenage girl perusing the otherwise deserted section, and not just any teenage girl but one who looked vaguely familiar. It took him a few seconds to place the girl as Emily's biological daughter – Hannah. At least that's who he thought it was. The girl was busy studying the titles on the bookshelf intently so he couldn't really see her face, just her side profile.

If it really was Hannah, the profiler didn't want to scare her by approaching her now. She wouldn't know who he was, and he knew an unknown male talking to a young teenage girl could be off-putting to say the least. Deciding to just get what he came for and leave without saying anything to her, he entered the row.

Sensing another presence, Hannah glanced up and offered Reid a polite but disinterested smile before turning back to the bookshelf. As soon as he saw her face, Reid knew it was Hannah. Her hair was lighter than Emily's and wavy instead of straight, but her facial features were similar enough to Emily's that there was no question they were related.

Reid and Hannah were only standing about two feet away from each other as they simultaneously scanned the titles on the shelf. When Hannah finally chose one, Reid tilted his head to the side so he could see the title from his angle. He recognized it as a psychological journal on genetics and specifically nature versus nurture. Ordinarily he would think it was an unusual choice for a high school student, but because Reid knew about the girl's recent reunion with Emily, her interest in the subject actually made sense. Her curiosity was only natural.

Reid understood the girl's desire to find answers to the fundamental questions of who she was and what made her…well, her in a scientific journal instead of from someone like Emily better than most, but he also knew she wouldn't find the answers she was looking for in that particular journal. Wanting to help, he changed his mind suddenly about not saying anything to her.

"You're Hannah, right?" Reid said, trying to strike up a conversation with Emily's daughter against his better judgment.

Hannah looked up from her reading with a wary expression. She had barely spared Reid a glance before and quickly sized him up now. He had a baby face and was wearing one of his signature sweater vests and mismatched socks. He looked harmless enough to her, but she didn't recognize him and didn't know how he knew who she was.

"Yeah," she said uneasily. "Who are you?"

"I'm Dr. Spencer Reid. I work with Emily," Reid introduced himself awkwardly.

"You work with Emily?" Hannah questioned skeptically. He didn't look like an FBI agent to her. And even if he was, that didn't explain how he knew who she was. She didn't think Emily had told anyone about her and didn't think the woman would decide to tell people now.

Reid nodded in confirmation. "At the BAU." He frowned slightly at the girl's confused expression, not realizing that Emily hadn't gone into detail about what she did at the FBI. "The Behavioral Analysis Unit at the FBI?" He prompted expectantly.

"Oh," Hannah said, accepting it as a true statement when she heard FBI. "Um…how do you know who I am?"

"From the night you ran away," Reid said honestly. "We helped Emily find you."

That was new information to the teenager and she blushed, feeling embarrassed that the people her birth mother worked with knew about that. "You did?"

"It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's what we do," Reid told her in a matter of fact tone.

Hannah thought it _was_ something to be embarrassed about. Did the whole FBI know she completely freaked out when she found out she was adopted?

There was a moment of awkward silence as the profiler waited for the teenager to say something. When she didn't, Reid glanced at the journal in her hand. "If you're trying to understand nature versus nurture as it relates to anyone who didn't grow up with their biological parents, that won't help you. It focuses more on mental illness."

"That's not what I'm doing," Hannah said a little too quickly. She looked at him nervously and invented, "It's for school. Biology."

Reid blinked at the obvious lie. She didn't get her skills – or lack thereof – in deception from Emily. "Okay, but if it is what you're doing, I'd recommend this one instead," he suggested helpfully, pulling a different publication down from the shelf and offering it to the flustered teenager.

Knowing he didn't believe her, Hannah took the proffered journal hesitantly. She figured it couldn't hurt to give it a look. She'd been there for half an hour already and hadn't found anything like what she was looking for.

Like any teenager, Hannah started her search on the Internet, but everything she found had either been a very basic description of what nature versus nurture was or short excerpts from scholarly journals that looked promising but were cut off before she got much out of them. It was actually the scholarly articles that gave her the idea to try the library.

Hannah flipped the publication Reid pulled for her open and skimmed through the table of contents. To her surprise, it was exactly what she was looking for – the results of a study on adoption and the conclusions drawn from it on whether genetics or environment was more important in determining a person's behavior and personality.

"Are you sure you're an FBI agent and not a librarian?" Hannah said wryly. She was kidding, but now that she thought about it, he actually kind of looked like a librarian.

"I'm not a librarian, but I have read every psychological science journal ever written," Reid told her earnestly.

"You've read every psychological science journal ever written?" Hannah repeated incredulously. She'd only skimmed through a few, and they weren't exactly light reading.

Reid nodded as if that were perfectly normal. "I read a lot."

"So what side are you on in the great nature versus nurture debate then?" Hannah asked curiously, trying her best to sound casual. Asking would be a lot easier than finding the answer herself.

"They both play a role," Reid said. "The real question is how much of a role."

"That's not helpful," Hannah told him ruefully.

"It's true though," Reid told her. "Most experts agree on that, even if they don't agree on which factor is more important. Behavioral scientists generally put more emphasis on the importance of environment and life experiences, more commonly referred to as nurture."

"Does that mean nurture is more important when it comes to behavior?" Hannah asked hopefully. The teenager was hearing what she wanted to hear, and what she really wanted to hear was that she might look like her birth parents, but she didn't act like them – or at least not the one who was a criminal. She hadn't gone in with any unrealistic expectations of her biological father. She didn't expect him to be a famous actor or anything like that. She just expected him to be a halfway decent person, and she was hugely disappointed to find out he was anything but.

Reid frowned slightly. "It's not that simple." The profiler watched the girl's face fall dramatically, the hopeful look on her face turning into a look of profound disappointment. He looked at her quizzically, his brow furrowed and eyes narrowed slightly. "Would it be so bad if you were like Emily?" He was defensive of Emily, and couldn't help the defensive note in his voice now.

Hannah opened her mouth to respond and then closed it abruptly as she realized he might not know who her father was - and Emily might not want everyone she worked with knowing. She shifted uncomfortably as she tried to figure out how to respond. "Emily's…not actually the biological parent I'm worried about," Hannah said vaguely, not going into detail.

It only dawned on him then that this wasn't about Emily at all – it was about Ian Doyle. Reid didn't know why he didn't think of that before. He probably should have, but when it came to Doyle, Emily had a history of trying to protect everyone by keeping her history with him secret. As protective as Emily was, Reid would have thought she'd keep the truth about who her father was from her daughter. Apparently not.

"Have you talked to Emily about this?" Reid asked hesitantly. He didn't know how much Hannah knew and wasn't going to risk letting something slip that Emily didn't want her to know.

Hannah scoffed slightly. "No."

"Why not?" Reid questioned. He was completely baffled by her response. Why wouldn't Hannah talk to the only person who knew both her and Ian Doyle on a personal level? He frowned at the teenager's clear disdain for the idea of talking to Emily. "Are you mad at her?"

"I'm not mad at her. I'm just – I don't know." The teenager let out a frustrated sigh. She didn't know what she was feeling or how to explain her emotional turmoil. Her disappointment in who her father was and her fear that she could be like him were too all-consuming for her to spend any time working through her jumbled thoughts and feelings about Emily.

"A lot of adoptees have feelings of abandonment," Reid suggested tentatively as he wondered if maybe that was the feeling Hannah didn't know how to describe. It would be a foreign feeling for someone who grew up as the only child of two adoptive parents who had desperately wanted a kid. There was probably never a day where she felt unloved or unwanted until the revelation that she was adopted.

Hannah glanced at him in surprise. The word abandonment wasn't right. Maybe she felt a little _unwanted_, but not _abandoned_. "It's kind of hard to feel abandoned by someone when you don't even know they exist," she said. "And I didn't know Emily existed until now."

Reid studied the teenager with a furrowed brow. "If you really have no negative feelings toward Emily, then why don't you want to talk to her?"

"I just don't, okay?" Hannah snapped in a frustrated tone. She knew anything she said now could – and probably would - be repeated to her birth mother. She wasn't going to tell someone who worked with Emily why she didn't want to talk to the woman, not about this.

"You have to," Reid said softly. This was Emily's daughter – that made her family. She was practically his niece. He looked down as he tried to figure out how to get through to her. "I love my mom," he started, "but she has schizophrenia, and until I was past the age where it would have manifested, I was afraid I could have it, too. That's why I read every psychological science journal ever written. My interest in genetics was personal." Reid looked back up and met Hannah's gaze, looking into eyes that were nearly identical to Emily's. "You know, nothing I read took away the fear that I could have schizophrenia. All the statistics really told me was that there was a chance I could have it. Take it from someone who knows, you're not going to find what you're looking for in a library. The only one who can tell you definitively if you're anything like your father is Emily."

"How can she do that when she doesn't really know me?" Hannah questioned skeptically.

"Maybe she doesn't really know you. Not yet anyway," Reid acknowledged, knowing the teenager had a point. Emily had only known Hannah for weeks at that point. "But Emily is the only person who really knew your father," he told the girl. "If you want to know which personality traits, if any, you got from him, you need to talk to her."

Hannah looked at him resignedly. "There's no way you're not going to tell her about this, is there?"

"I have to," Reid told her with an apologetic note in his voice. He knew from his own experience that understanding the statistical probability that he was genetically predisposed to schizophrenia had done nothing to ease his fears. While the teenager would be able to find the scientific answer to her question in the journal he pulled for her, it wouldn't make her feel better, but talking to Emily might. Hannah needed to talk to Emily, whether she wanted to or not.

"I'm not going to have a choice then," Hannah muttered, stifling a groan. Emily hadn't exactly shied away from hard topics the last time they talked so the woman would probably say something about this the next time Hannah saw her. Trying to resign herself to that, the young teenager looked at Reid a little begrudgingly but with genuine curiosity in her eyes. "Did talking to your dad help when you were worried you could be sick like your mom?"

"I didn't talk to my dad about it," Reid admitted reluctantly. He hadn't planned on telling the girl about his estranged father. He only told Hannah about his mom because he was trying to relate to her and thought he could relate to her based on their mutual fear of becoming a parent they were terrified they could be like. It had worked, too. The girl was opening up to him.

"Then how can you stand there and tell me to talk to Emily?" Hannah demanded, raising her eyebrows at how hypocritical that was.

"I didn't talk to my dad about it because he left my mom and me when I was young," Reid explained with a frown. He swallowed as he felt the familiar mixture of hurt and anger that always accompanied any thoughts of his dad.

"I'm sorry," Hannah said quietly with unmistakable sincerity in her voice. "That really sucks." Feeling like he had to understand not wanting to talk to an absentee parent, the teenager tried again to convince him not to tell Emily what she was doing in the library. "But if you think about it, technically Emily left me when I was born. I don't want to talk to her about it any more than you wanted to talk to your dad."

"It's not the same," Reid said fiercely, not liking the way the teenager was comparing the dad he resented with someone he had the utmost respect for. "My dad knew my mom needed help, and he still left me with her. He wasn't thinking about me when he left. He wasn't thinking about anyone but himself."

"And Emily was thinking about me," Hannah said in a dull tone, knowing that was the point he was trying to make even if she wasn't sure she believed it.

"She was," Reid insisted. "Did she tell you why she gave you up for adoption?"

"She said she did it to keep me safe." Hannah looked down and shook her head. "I just - I don't believe _she_ couldn't have kept me safe. I mean, she has a gun."

"Actually, she has at least two guns," Reid corrected, referring to Emily's service weapons. "But the people she was trying to protect you from had guns, too. What matters is that she believes leaving you with your adoptive parents was the only way to guarantee your safety. Whether you believe it or not, she really believes she was protecting you."

"Now I feel like a jerk," Hannah said.

"I don't think you're a jerk," Reid said honestly. "And neither does Emily."

"I'll talk to her," Hannah promised, specifically not saying what she was going to talk to Emily about. Maybe he wouldn't tell Emily if he thought she was going to tell her herself. She wasn't actually going to ask her birth mother if she was like her father, but she was going to see if the woman still wanted to do something with her that weekend.

What if she _was_ like her father? Would her birth mother still want anything to do with her if Hannah reminded Emily of the man she had helped put behind bars?

* * *

After Hannah begged off brunch with a lame excuse that her profiler mother didn't believe for a second, JJ insisted that the women of the BAU go to brunch on Saturday to cheer Emily up. Instead of having brunch with her daughter, Emily met JJ, Penelope, and Tara for brunch at their go-to brunch spot. They were seated and Emily had taken her first sip of a much-needed mimosa when Penelope looked at her nervously.

"Not that I'm not glad we're doing this because I am – I really am," Penelope started, "but I still don't understand why you can't just make Hannah to go to brunch with you."

"Uh, because that would be kidnapping," Emily replied dryly.

"She's your kid," Penelope countered.

Emily sighed wearily. "Not legally. Look, I'm not going to drag her to brunch kicking and screaming." She shrugged helplessly. "She didn't want to go."

"I think you missed the kicking and screaming stage, Em," JJ told her with a small smirk. "I wish Michael were past it. He had a total meltdown in the grocery store this morning because I wouldn't buy him a candy bar. You should have seen the way everyone was looking at me. Like I'm a terrible person because I'm not feeding my toddler candy for breakfast." JJ rolled her eyes and shook her head.

"Is that why you're depriving us of his cuteness now?" Penelope demanded indignantly.

"No," JJ answered with a laugh. "Will's taking the boys to lunch and a movie so I can do some Christmas shopping."

Penelope gasped, mock scandalized. "You're going shopping and you weren't going to invite us?"

"I try to avoid the mall this time of year," Tara said, raising her eyebrows at the tech analyst as she wondered how the other woman could actually _want_ to go to the mall in December.

"I'm with you," Emily told Tara.

"I'm not looking forward to it," JJ said honestly with a wary expression.

"Aw, do you need a little liquid courage before you brave the crowds?" Emily asked as she picked up the pitcher of mimosa and topped off JJ's glass.

"Like we need an excuse for mimosas," Penelope scoffed as she took a drink from her own glass.

"Laugh now, but just wait until moms fighting over the last Fingerling in the store make the evening news," JJ said wryly, referring to one of the 'it' toys of the year that was in low supply and high demand.

"What the hell is a Fingerling?" Emily asked with a confused expression.

"And more importantly, does Henry want one? Do you need his fairy godmother to find it for him?" Penelope offered magnanimously.

"Thankfully Fingerlings aren't on either of the boys' Christmas lists," JJ said. She shifted her gaze to Emily. "And you don't want to know. Just think the Tickle Me Elmo of 2018."

"I remember people fighting over those Tickle Me Elmo dolls!" Emily told her.

"Moms can be ruthless when it comes to getting their kids what they want for Christmas," Tara mused. She tilted her head to the side slightly, looking at JJ curiously. "What does Henry want? I still need to get him something."

As JJ went through her oldest son's extensive Christmas list, rolling her eyes at some of the outlandish things he was asking for, Emily's phone started ringing. The chatter stopped abruptly and all four women froze, knowing they might be getting called in on their day off.

"If we're getting called in, I'm finishing my mimosa first," Penelope warned them.

Emily glanced at the screen of her iPhone, planning to send whoever was calling to voicemail unless they were actually getting called in. "You can relax. It's just Spencer," the BAU Unit Chief told her companions before answering it. "Hey, Spence."

"Tell him to come join us!" Penelope exclaimed excitedly.

"He should come," Tara agreed. "We haven't even ordered yet."

"Emily, hi," Reid said a little impatiently. "Listen, I'm leaving the West End Library right now."

"Oh, yeah? I'm with JJ, Tara, and Penelope. Do you want to meet us for brunch?" Emily asked him.

Reid frowned slightly as he tried to hear Emily over the background noise of the restaurant she was in. And was that Penelope demanding that Emily give her the phone? "Actually, I'm calling because I saw Hannah at the library."

"You did?" Emily said in a surprised tone. Maybe Hannah hadn't been lying and she was actually doing homework on a Saturday. That might be a first for a teenager.

"She was looking at psychological journals containing research on genetics, and specifically nature versus nurture," Reid told her. "She's worried she could be like Ian Doyle."

"How do you know that's what she's worried about?" Emily asked warily. She closed her eyes for a second and let out a small, frustrated sigh. "Please tell me you didn't say anything to her." If Hannah hadn't come to her with her worries and fears, somehow Emily didn't think the teenager would appreciate one of her colleagues prying into something so personal.

"Who are we talking about here?" JJ inquired curiously, leaning forward in her chair.

"Yeah, what's wrong?" Tara asked with a concerned expression.

Emily held up her hand, silently signaling for both of them to hang on.

"I can't because I did," Reid admitted. "I wasn't going to say anything at first, but when I saw what she was reading, I couldn't help it. I actually think it might have helped her to talk to me about how she was feeling."

Emily raised her eyebrows in surprise. Hannah talked to Reid about her feelings? The mother was glad her daughter was talking to someone, but wished the girl felt like she could talk to her. "How _is_ she feeling?"

"That's just it. I don't think she really knows. She doesn't really seem angry with you though," Reid mused.

"No, she just doesn't want to talk to me," Emily said wryly. She thought she'd take her kid angry over shutting her out if she had a choice.

"She said she would talk to you," Reid reported back. "But she doesn't really want to. She wouldn't tell me why though. She did say she doesn't believe that you couldn't have kept her safe even if you didn't give her up for adoption. I think maybe she's hurt that you didn't find another way to protect her."

"There was no other way," Emily said resolutely.

"I know you believe that," Reid said quietly.

"You don't?" Emily questioned a little defensively.

"There's always another way. One that doesn't involve leaving your family," Reid said pointedly. He wasn't just talking about Emily's daughter anymore. He was talking about Emily leaving them.

Emily left them to go after Ian Doyle alone. When they found her in that warehouse in Boston and saved her from Doyle, she let Reid believe she was dead because she didn't think Doyle would stop coming after the team – or her – as long as she was alive. And it wasn't just whenever Doyle was involved.

Emily almost left again last year. She was going to take the fall for what happened in Roswell so Linda Barnes would leave the team alone. The only reason she didn't was because Reid found her packing and convinced her to stay.

"Is this still about Hannah?" Emily asked. She had a feeling it wasn't.

"No, it's about you," Reid told her bluntly. "Your answer is always to leave.

"Always? That's a bit of an exaggeration," Emily said lightly.

"Maybe not always, but enough that it's a pattern of behavior," Reid said, daring to profile her. "And I know it's always to protect the people you care about," he acknowledged, "but we care about you, too. I just worry that you'll leave us again if you think you're protecting us," he continued solemnly. Her protective nature was the reason they were even having this conversation so he decided to appeal to her protective instincts with a hypothetical scenario. "How would you feel if the situations were reversed? What if I was in trouble and I just left to deal with it on my own?"

Emily's first thought was that if he ever did that, she would find him and kick his ass. But it would never come to that. If Reid was in trouble, she would know. She had always been able to tell when something was going on with him, even when she was new to the team. When he was using Dilaudid, Emily was the first one to call him on all the changes in his behavior even though she'd only known him for months at the time. She thought she had a pretty good track record of knowing when something was up with him - and, now that she knew him better, of getting him to talk to her about it.

"You wouldn't do that," Emily said simply. She didn't tell him that she would never let him do that, but she was thinking it.

"No, I wouldn't. But if I did, how would you feel?" Reid asked her, not backing down. He wanted her to think about it. Mainly he just didn't want Emily to leave again.

Reid loved JJ and Penelope, but they were relatively close in age. The three of them had always been the youngest on the highly experienced BAU team. They were friends. They were family, too – the whole team was family. But it was different with Emily. She was almost exactly eleven years older than he was. She literally had a decade more experience than he did. He looked up to Emily Prentiss. She was a sort of pseudo big sister to him. Now that she was officially his boss, Emily was the only consistent female authority figure he'd ever had. But even before she was Unit Chief of the BAU, Emily was a trusted older female who had been a (mostly) stable presence in his life, her absences when she was legally dead and again when she was working for Interpol in London notwithstanding. Growing up with an unstable mother, Spencer Reid had never really had an older female looking out for him until Emily. Reid felt like he was slowly losing his mom as her Alzheimer's progressed. He didn't think he could stand to lose Emily again, too.

"Okay, you've made your point," Emily told Reid gently, not wanting to argue. They would never agree on this. It would be different if he were in trouble just because of who he was. He was the youngest member of the team. Even if she weren't his boss - which she was - Emily saw Spencer Reid as the kid brother she never had. It was her job to protect him, both as his boss and as a self-appointed older sister.

"Have I?" Reid questioned doubtfully.

"Yes. Come on, Reid, it's me," Emily said in a pleading tone, not wanting him to worry about this. "I'm not going anywhere, but even if I did – even if I were back in London – you know I'd still be there for you, anything you need. You do know that, right?"

"I know," Reid conceded. "For what it's worth, I think I convinced Hannah that you were trying to do the right thing for her."

"Oh, yeah?" Emily said cautiously.

Emily listened as he recounted the rest of his conversation with Hannah, the mother's concern growing as Reid dutifully repeated everything her daughter said to him about her and Ian Doyle. She chewed her bottom lip as Reid told her that for the longest time he was terrified he could have schizophrenia like his mom and that he saw that same fear in Hannah now.

A teenage girl should be worrying about her grades and whether or not her high school crush liked her, not whether she had inherited criminal tendencies from her father.

Maybe it was a mistake to tell Hannah the truth about who her father was. Emily didn't want to lie to her daughter, but was fourteen too young for the uncensored truth? Should she have waited until the girl was older?

Emily didn't know if she should have told Hannah as much as she did, but it was too late now. The only thing she could do now was take away her child's fears – or try to anyway.

"Is she still at the library?" Emily asked urgently.

"She was when I left," Reid told her. "And I _just_ left. If you hurry, you can probably catch her."

"Thank you," Emily said before hanging up. She took enough money to cover the mimosa she'd nearly finished and a tip out of her wallet and set it on the table. "Sorry, but I have to go. Spencer saw Hannah, and, well, I really have to go, but I'll explain later."

* * *

Ten minutes later Emily slid out of the back of her Uber driver's car and walked into the library. She followed the librarian's instructions to a fairly deserted part of the library where she found Hannah sitting alone at a table with her earbuds in and a research journal open in front of her on the table.

Emily sat down in the chair directly across from Hannah, prompting the teenager to look up with a small sigh. The girl took her earbuds out and looked at Emily expectantly. She didn't exactly seem happy to see her, but she also didn't seem angry or even annoyed. If anything, the girl just seemed resigned.

"Well, that was fast," Hannah observed.

**A/N:** Thanks for reading and to everyone who reviewed! In answer to a question, I have plans to include Declan eventually, but not any time soon. I want Emily and Hannah to have a solid relationship before introducing Declan. The way I plan to introduce him will be a source of major drama later on.


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N:** This is all Emily and Hannah and is a little shorter, but felt like it should be a standalone.

**Chapter 11**

"Well, that was fast."

"If you need more time to finish…" Emily's voice trailed off as she picked up the research journal Hannah was reading.

"Hey," Hannah protested weakly as her reading material was snatched right out from under her. She'd moved on from the study Reid pulled for her and was now reading one focused on violent and antisocial behavior.

Emily ignored her daughter's protest and flipped to the title page, careful to mark Hannah's place with her finger. "_The Nature and Nurture of Antisocial Behavior and Violence_?" Emily read the title aloud with raised eyebrows.

"I thought it was fitting since my father's a criminal," Hannah said.

"Right. Well, I can wait while you finish." Emily returned to her daughter's place and slid the journal across the table so it was within Hannah's reach, but the teenager didn't make any move to reclaim it. "Go ahead. Don't let me stop you from finding out if you're destined to be an arms dealer when you grow up," Emily told her child facetiously, trying to get her to see how unfounded her fears were.

The fourteen year old wasn't going to suddenly turn into a criminal mastermind just because she shared DNA with Ian Doyle. As a profiler with the BAU, Emily Prentiss knew it was nurture that made serial killers do the things they did. It was the triggering events and stressors in their lives. It could be childhood abuse or the trauma of losing a loved one. It could be a betrayal or a perceived injustice. It could be anything, but it was always _something_.

Neither Hannah nor Declan grew up the way their father had. Ian was orphaned at a young age and spent his childhood in an Irish orphanage. The overburdened caretakers saw that the basic needs of food and shelter were met for the orphans in their care, but no one really cared about Ian. There were too many children and too few adults. Growing up like that Ian didn't have a strong bond with any adults. He didn't really know what love was and had no real attachment or emotional connection to anyone. It didn't excuse what he had become or the things he did, but there was a reason Ian Doyle was the way he was.

"I'm not going to be an arms dealer," Hannah replied to the preposterous suggestion with a hint of exasperation in her voice. She knew Emily didn't _really_ think she would be an arms dealer, but she still thought the woman was being ridiculous – which was the whole idea. She shot her birth mother a look of teenage annoyance. "That's not what I'm worried about."

"Well, right now that's the only thing you really know about your father," Emily pointed out rationally.

"That's enough to know I don't want to be like him," Hannah said, shuddering visibly at the thought.

"You're not," Emily told the girl.

"You don't know that," Hannah said, easily dismissing what Emily had to say on the subject.

"Because I just started getting to know you?" Emily said with a knowing expression, beating her kid to the punch. She knew that was coming, and she was going to head it off. She didn't wait for the girl to respond – she didn't need to. She already knew the answer. "I know I haven't known you that long, and I still have a lot to learn about you," Emily acknowledged, "but I already know you are _nothing_ like your father, sweetheart."

Hannah tilted her head to the side and looked at Emily in disbelief. All the woman really knew about her was how she liked her eggs and her taste in books.

Seeing that her daughter didn't believe her, Emily sighed and bit her bottom lip. She really didn't want to have to do this, but it was the only way she could think of to show Hannah that she _did _know her well enough to know if she was anything like Ian Doyle – which she wasn't as far as Emily could see. The profiler was going to profile her kid.

Emily didn't even have to try to profile her kid. As a profiler, Emily noticed things that the average person might not think were important. It was only natural for her. It was just how her brain worked after doing what she did for as long as she had. There were a lot of things the profiler had already noticed about her kid in the limited amount of time they spent together. She was trying to get to know Hannah so of course she listened carefully to every word her daughter said to her and paid attention to nonverbal cues and behavior that could give her an idea of what the girl was thinking or how the girl was feeling.

The seasoned profiler went back through everything she'd learned about her kid so far. She licked her lips as she decided what she could say without making the young teenager any more guarded with her than she already was. No one liked being profiled.

"Last weekend," Emily started cautiously, "when we needed somewhere to go talk after brunch, you didn't want to go back to your house, but only because you wanted to ask me about your biological father and you didn't want to hurt your dad's feelings. You feel like your dad lied to you because he didn't tell you that you were adopted until now, right? But even though you're mad at him, you went out of your way to spare his feelings. That tells me you're caring and considerate. It also tells me that even if you haven't yet, you're going to forgive your dad."

"Um, I haven't actually forgiven him yet," Hannah admitted. She felt like Emily was giving her more credit than she deserved.

"You will," Emily said confidently. "Your biological father wasn't capable of forgiveness. He would have wanted to hurt anyone who betrayed his trust, no matter how close he was to them. He would have enjoyed it." The profiler had a faraway look on her face as she remembered the things Doyle did to her while she was waiting for her team to find her…branding her chest, repeatedly throwing her into a cement wall, the brutal beating at his hands, literally kicking her while she was down and breaking a couple of her ribs in the process.

"He sounds like a real charmer," Hannah said sarcastically.

"He lacked empathy. You don't," Emily continued. She looked at her kid with a soft, almost tender expression. "When you thought there was a possibility he raped me, you showed empathy for me. We just met, and you don't know me that well yet, but you still didn't like the idea of anything like that happening to me."

"Of course not," Hannah said quickly, looking horrified. "No one deserves that." She realized a second too late how that must sound. It sounded like she didn't feel anything more for Emily than she would for anyone else in that situation. But Emily wasn't just anyone. Emily was her mother. Hannah didn't want the woman to think their connection wasn't important to her because it was. "And you – you're not just anyone. I mean…we're kind of related," the teenager added hastily.

Emily wanted to smile at the girl's awkward acknowledgement of their relationship, but she didn't want to make Hannah feel self-conscious. "Oh, we're related, all right," she agreed, trying to keep her tone light. "You have my eyes, my love of historical fiction, and my sarcasm. You don't just have his genes, you know." She gave her kid a look that was a little pointed, but not hard or unkind.

"I don't think the FBI agent's genes cancel out the criminal's genes," Hannah said. She looked down, averting her eyes. "Everything I read said there's a connection between genes and personality. There has to be something I got from him." She thought of her worst qualities. Things she wasn't proud of became magnified in her mind, suddenly seeming much worse to her than they actually were. Everything she was thinking of was pretty normal behavior for a teenager like lying to get out of trouble or to get her dad to say yes to something she knew he wouldn't let her do if he had all the information, but now Hannah was wondering if the little things she'd gotten in trouble for over the years or gotten away with but still felt guilty about were things that made her like her father.

Emily looked at her daughter sadly. It was bad enough to see her kid struggling, but knowing she caused it by telling Hannah about Doyle just made it ten times worse.

To her frustration, her attempts to convince the girl that she was nothing like Ian Doyle weren't working. Hannah was absolutely convinced she had gotten some fatal personality flaw from her biological father, and nothing Emily could say was going to convince her otherwise. Emily needed to try a different tack.

"Okay, you want to know something you could have gotten from him?" Emily said reluctantly, knowing this could end badly. It was a risk, but Emily needed to take it to make her kid see that genetics didn't make her destined to be like Ian Doyle - she had a choice in how she lived her life.

Hannah's head snapped up in surprise, her wary eyes meeting her birth mother's determined gaze.

"You care enough about your grades that you asked me for help with your French paper. That wasn't your dad making you get help because you got a bad grade. That was all you wanting to get an A. That tells me you're driven to succeed. Maybe you already know what you want to do or where you want to go to school, and you're working toward that?" Emily guessed, going back to profiling the girl with an end goal in mind.

"I want to be a doctor," Hannah told her. "An oncologist."

"An oncologist, huh? Does that have anything to do with how your mom died?" Emily asked with a sympathetic expression, knowing it did.

Hannah nodded sadly.

"Okay, you want to save lives. That's a far cry from what your biological father did," Emily told her kid. And it would help illustrate her point. "He was also very driven, but it's what you do with that drive that makes you different from him. You're going to use it to help people." Emily looked her daughter straight in the eyes. "Hannah, genetics is only one part of what makes you who you are. There are _a lot_ of other things that go into it. You want to cure cancer because your mom had breast cancer. That's nurture, not nature."

"And that's it? That's the only thing I got from him?" Hannah wanted to verify, desperately needing confirmation that there wasn't anything else. She looked at her birth mother intently as she waited for the answer only Emily would have. She no longer thought Emily didn't know her well enough to say whether she was like her biological father or not. She had realized by this point in the conversation that the woman knew her better than she ever would have thought possible after one brunch.

"You actually could have gotten it from either one of us," Emily told her honestly. "I was always pretty driven, too."

"You really don't think I'm like him, do you?" Hannah said in a surprised tone. At first she thought her birth mother was just saying that to make her feel better. That was what moms did, and while Emily didn't strike Hannah as the stereotypical mom, the woman was in fact her mother. She had to have some kind of maternal instinct, right? But the more they talked, the more it seemed like Emily really believed what she was saying.

"I really don't," Emily replied. That was only what she'd been trying to convince her kid of this entire time.

"What if I was? Would you have wanted anything to do with me?" Hannah wondered. It was something that had been bothering her. She thought maybe if she said or did something that reminded her birth mother of her father, the woman wouldn't want to spend any more time with her. Why would she? Her father sounded like a complete and total jerk.

"Yes," Emily said without hesitation. "I've always known who your father is. It doesn't change the fact that you're my daughter." She looked at Hannah with a newfound understanding as her child's reluctance to talk to her about this suddenly made sense. "Wait a minute, is that why you didn't want to talk to me about this? Because you thought I wouldn't want-"

"Yeah," Hannah cut her birth mother off. "But we talked, and we're good now, right?"

Emily narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "I don't know. Are we?"

"We are," Hannah told her.

"If you say so," Emily said skeptically, not quite sure her teenager was being honest.

* * *

"Let me buy you a cup of coffee," Emily said suddenly as they left the library, wanting more time with her daughter.

There were a few coffee shops nearby, but Emily led the way to a local independent coffee shop that had a good collection of board games for its patrons to play. She thought it would be good if there were something for her to do with Hannah besides just drink coffee and talk.

There was a reason child psychologists played games with their young patients. Playing a game could be a conversation starter, a welcome distraction from more difficult topics of conversation, and a way to make any awkward silences less awkward.

They ordered – an herbal tea and a breakfast sandwich for Emily and a peppermint mocha and a sugar cookie for Hannah – and found a table.

Emily nodded toward the shelves that were full of different board games. "Do you play chess?" She asked.

"My dad taught me when I was younger, but I haven't played in years. I don't really remember how," Hannah said honestly. She scanned the shelves for something she would play and suggested, "Scrabble?"

"Sure," Emily agreed readily.

Hannah retrieved the game and set it up.

"So you never said how you did on your French paper," Emily said curiously as she looked at the letters she had and thought of possible words.

"Oh, I got an A," Hannah told her.

"That's great," Emily said happily with a beaming smile. "I knew you would."

"I wouldn't have, not without your help," Hannah acknowledged.

"I'm happy to help any time," Emily reminded her. "Are finals coming up?"

Hannah nodded distractedly as she studied the Scrabble board. "The week before Christmas."

As they played, Hannah answered Emily's questions about her classes and what she was taking next semester.

"I have to take Speech or Debate. My dad wants me to take Debate. It's the lawyer in him. He loves arguing about everything." Hannah rolled her eyes. "And then I have to take an art or music class. I have no musical or artistic talent so I'm taking Art History." She shrugged unenthusiastically. "I can't take any of the electives I really want to take until junior or senior year."

"What do you want to take?" Emily asked.

"Well, there's a medicine class I really want to take," Hannah said. "It's actually before school. It starts at, like, 6:00 am so that's gonna be rough, but everyone who takes it loves it. They have doctors come in to teach part of the time, and they get to watch a surgery," she explained excitedly.

Emily made a face. "Oh, man, that sounds awful to me. I _hate_ hospitals."

"Don't tell me the badass FBI agent's afraid of needles," Hannah teased with a grin.

"I'm not afraid. I just don't like being stabbed with anything, and that includes needles," Emily told her. She looked at her daughter's new Scrabble word and gave the girl a look. "Okay, twerking is not a word."

"It is, too!" Hannah argued.

Emily had to laugh at the childish argument coming from her fourteen year old. "It is not. It's not even really dancing."

"Miley Cyrus would disagree," Hannah told her.

"Forget Miley Cyrus. What does the dictionary say?" Emily challenged her kid.

Hannah unlocked her iPhone and went to a free Dictionary site where she searched for the word in question. She showed Emily the result with a smug smirk. "It's in the dictionary."

"As slang," Emily pointed out. There was an italicized _Slang_ label above the definition. "Sorry, kid. There's no slang in Scrabble."

"Ugh, okay, fine," Hannah conceded, grudgingly removing the tiles. "You know, you're supposed to let me win," the teenager grumbled good-naturedly with a sly look at Emily. "It's, like, an unwritten rule of being a parent."

"Oh, yeah?" Emily said with a little laugh, pleasantly surprised that Hannah referred to her in that context even if it was in a roundabout, half-joking way. "Does your dad let you win?"

"He doesn't have to let me win," Hannah answered honestly but with a hint of teenage arrogance. "He's terrible at Scrabble."

"Okay, so you're just not used to having any real competition then," Emily said with an amused expression.

Hannah just shot her birth mother a look and then carefully laid out her tiles to form the word _twenty._ It wasn't worth quite as many points as twerking would have been, but she still managed to strategically place the 'W' on a Double Letter space putting her just ahead of Emily in points so the teenager considered it a win.

In the end, it was close, but the word _jukebox_ won the game for Emily. Hannah was a pretty good sport about it, but she still wanted a rematch.

"Next weekend?" Emily proposed a time for the rematch. "Unless you're going to be too busy doing homework all weekend," she said with a pointed look at her daughter. It was her way of calling the girl out for the excuse she had used when she said she couldn't go to brunch with Emily.

Hannah stiffened and looked down. "I'm sorry I lied. I just didn't want to hurt your feelings by saying no." She cast a furtive glance at Emily and saw that the woman didn't look mad. She almost looked sad, which was worse. "I did want to do something with you," Hannah told her birth mother. "But…I don't know. You had just told me who my father was. I knew I didn't want to be like him, but he's my father, and I was just…I was afraid I'd start to remind you of him. Why would you want a constant reminder of him?"

Emily frowned, appalled by the teenager's logic. "Uh, maybe because that reminder is my daughter." She stared at the top of the girl's bowed head and sighed wearily. "Hannah, would you please just look at me?"

Hannah looked up, reluctantly meeting Emily's gaze.

"Honey, I don't see you as a reminder," Emily told her child. "I don't look at you and see your father. I just see an innocent child – my child." She reached across the table and took Hannah's pale hand in hers, rubbing circles on top of the girl's hand with her thumb. "My flesh and blood."

Hannah was moved by her birth mother's heartfelt words, but she didn't really know how to respond. "I don't know about the innocent part," she said, trying to lighten the mood. "I did lie to you," she reminded the woman.

"Yeah, well, next time you're going to blow me off, at least come up with a better excuse," Emily teased her kid. She was every bit as uncomfortable as her daughter with having an emotional conversation in a public coffee shop and was more than willing to let the moment pass now that she'd made her point. "Really, what teenager does homework on a Saturday?"

They were both laughing as they left the coffee shop. They walked to the nearest Metro stop together in companionable silence. Since she was planning on having a couple of mimosas with JJ, Penelope and Tara at brunch, Emily hadn't driven to the restaurant and had taken an Uber to the library. Like Hannah, she would be taking the Metro home.

Hannah grudgingly agreed to text her birth mother when she got home so Emily would know she made it okay even though she thought it was a silly request and told the woman so.

"Humor me," was all Emily said in response.

"Fine," Hannah conceded with a roll of her eyes. "Emily?" She called a little shyly as they started to part ways. The woman turned back to her with a smile. "Thank you for everything today," Hannah said sincerely. "It was good. I'm glad we talked."

"Any time, kid," Emily replied with a big, beaming smile.

**A/N:** Thanks for reading and to everyone who reviewed!

I intended to end this chapter with a scene with the BAU in Quantico, but I'm still not quite happy with it and this seemed like a natural ending. Next chapter will be focused on the BAU and may not have Hannah in it at all to make up for this chapter being solely focused on Emily and Hannah.

Here's a question. We're not quite there yet, but in the timeline of this story we're getting close to Christmas. I have an idea for Hannah to invite Emily to spend Christmas with Steve's family. That would include a bunch of OC's in the form of Steve's mother, sister, and nieces and nephews and would be 1-2 chapters at the most. I don't want to write something everyone will hate because there are too many OC's though. I will include some holiday fluff and a BAU holiday party regardless, but I'd love some thoughts on whether you would like to see the Christmas day chapter or would prefer to avoid a chapter with that many OC's. Thank you.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 12**

"Emily Prentiss!"

Emily glanced up from her paperwork as the blur of hot pink that was the BAU tech analyst stormed into her office like a neon hurricane.

"Penelope?" Emily said slowly, raising her eyebrows at the other woman's dramatic entrance.

"You can't just leave brunch the way you did on Saturday and then not say anything for _two_ days," Penelope told her in a big huff. "How's your mini-me?"

"Hannah? Oh, she's fine," Emily assured her friend.

Penelope stared at her in disbelief. "That's it? That's _all_ you're going to give me? You left mid-brunch without even finishing your mimosa so I know it was an emergency. Now spill," Penelope ordered her.

"You say that like I'm an alcoholic," Emily said with a dry expression, not sure if she should be insulted. "It wasn't an emergency. Spencer saw Hannah at the library, and I wanted to catch her before she left. That's all."

"Does that mean she wasn't lying about the oodles of homework she had?" Penelope asked hopefully, wanting to believe the best of her new honorary niece.

"Oh, she was lying. She wasn't doing homework at the library. She was reading journals on genetics." Emily looked down, staring at the surface of her desk. Her team already knew who Hannah's biological father was, but it still wasn't something Emily was all that comfortable talking about. Ian Doyle was a triggering subject for all of them, Emily more than anyone. "She was, um, afraid she could be like Doyle. And instead of just asking me if she was like him, she was reading up on nature versus nurture," Emily told her friend, venting a little about her frustration with her kid's reluctance to talk to her. Hannah wouldn't have had to spend a week worrying about it if she had just talked to Emily about her fears.

"Wait, she knows about Doyle?" Penelope questioned with wide eyes.

"She asked me who her father was. I didn't want to lie to her," Emily explained as she wondered for the hundredth time if she made a mistake telling her kid about Ian Doyle.

It didn't take a profiler to read the guilt and self-doubt in Emily's eyes. "Well, yeah, lying is wrong and – and bad," Penelope said quickly. She didn't want her friend to think she was judging her. She was judgment free.

"I don't know if telling her was the right thing," Emily said with heavy doubt in her voice. "I mean, she was a pretty well-adjusted kid until she found out she was adopted and her father was an arms dealer. She's gonna need therapy now thanks to me," Emily said wryly. "I just can't help thinking it was selfish of me to insert myself into her life."

"You? Selfish?" Penelope gasped. "Emily, no. You don't have a selfish bone in your body."

"I'm not sure that's true. I'm the one that wanted a connection with her, not the other way around," Emily said honestly. "She didn't even know about me or that she was adopted. She was blissfully ignorant."

"Okay, first of all, anyone that doesn't want you in their life is just plain dumb, and if that girl has even half the brain that you have in your pretty raven-haired head, she's no dummy," Penelope told Emily. "And then we have the sad but true fact that she lost her adoptive mom. You know how I felt when I lost my parents? Totally and completely alone."

"I know that feeling, and my parents aren't dead," Emily muttered under her breath.

Penelope wasn't going to touch Emily Prentiss' mommy issues with a ten-foot pole. She pretended she hadn't heard Emily and continued. "I was older than Hannah when my parents died, and there have still been _so_ many times when I really wanted my mom. No one can bring the mom she lost back, but she isn't going to feel like she's all alone when she needs advice about boys or clothes or any number of things a girl just needs a mom for because she's not going to be alone. She's going to have you. That's huge."

"Yeah." Emily smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. Hannah's adoptive mom physically couldn't be there for her because she was dead, and the girl was old enough to understand that. Emily was just afraid that every time she was there for her and Sarah Johnson wasn't, all Hannah would be thinking was that she wanted the other woman, not Emily.

Penelope continued on her mission to lift Emily's spirits. "You're going to be there when she needs to know what to wear on her first date and when she's shopping for a prom dress and -"

"Okay, please stop before I'm shopping for a wedding dress for my fourteen year old kid," Emily interrupted, sensing a theme.

"Sorry," Penelope apologized sheepishly. She was quiet for a moment as she worked up the courage to ask something she'd been wanting to ask ever since Emily announced she had a fourteen year old daughter. "Do you remember when you told me you were having a nightmare about a little girl with dark hair? The girl was waiting for you, but you couldn't get to her?" Penelope tried to jog Emily's memory. Penelope would never forget it because it was one of the last things Emily said to her before her fake death. It wasn't _the_ absolute last thing, but it was the last time they really talked one-on-one before Emily was just gone. "For the longest time I thought you made it up. But now I think maybe the nightmare was real, and the little girl was your little girl. It was Hannah." Penelope looked to Emily for confirmation.

Emily nodded slowly. "She was waiting for me and I couldn't find her. I always had that nightmare after cases where kids were involved. And then when Doyle escaped from prison, it changed. I couldn't find her, but he did. I covered my tracks well, but I still had this irrational fear that he would find her. I had that nightmare every night when I was in Paris. I wasn't really sleeping."

Penelope glanced at Emily questioningly. "But you don't have the nightmare anymore now that you found her, right?"

"I haven't had the nightmare since I found her, no," Emily replied. "I guess I just needed to know that she was okay."

"She was better than okay," Penelope told her firmly, trying to get rid of the last of Emily's guilt and self-doubt. She spoke quickly without really thinking. "She had the life you wanted for her. She was such a happy kid. I'm talking bouncing in her Mary Janes happy."

Emily's expression changed from the guilty one she'd had for most of the conversation to one of confusion and then finally settled on a knowing expression. She narrowed her eyes at the tech analyst. "Garcia…"

"Okay, I know I'm strictly forbidden from stalking Hannah's Instagram and Snapchat," Penelope said quickly, referring to a warning Emily gave her after the daughter reveal about _not_ cyber-stalking the teenager. "But you never said anything about her adoptive mom's Facebook so you can't be mad and - please stop giving me that look now. I promise I won't do it again unless, of course, you ask me to."

"Please don't," Emily told her seriously.

"I won't," Penelope assured her.

Emily had heard that from the other woman before and wasn't sure she believed it. She sighed wearily. "This isn't like you spying on me when I was in London."

Penelope gasped, mock-innocent. "I did no such thing!"

Emily tilted her head to the side and gave the tech analyst a look. "Oh, come on. How else would everyone have known about Mark before I told anyone I was seeing someone?"

"Oh, that," Penelope said with a dismissive wave of her hand, not seeing what the big deal was. "That wasn't _spying_."

"What was it then?" Emily asked with a slightly amused expression as she wondered how the other woman would try to spin it.

"I was just keeping tabs on you because you're my friend and I love you and you have a lot of seriously scary enemies," Penelope said. "How else was I supposed to know you were alive and well when you insisted on moving halfway across the world?"

How could Emily argue with that logic? She knew Penelope always meant well. That was the problem - Emily could never stay mad at her for long. "Well, this isn't like that," Emily said with a pointed look at the tech analyst. "This is a kid you don't even know yet. A kid I don't know that well yet. You do realize if she ever finds out, it will make her really uncomfortable? I don't want her to think you're a creepy stalker. And I _really_ don't want to be guilty by association."

"Oh, Em, you should have said that's what you were worried about," Penelope said with a newfound understanding. Emily Prentiss, international woman of mystery, wasn't just trying to keep her secret daughter…well, secret like Penelope had thought at first. Emily was worried about what Hannah would think. "I was so stealthy. She'll never know. And I'll stop now. Really," Penelope conceded. "But before my ban officially starts, do you want to see pictures of her as a cute little baby?"

"I don't know," Emily said uncertainly. Of course she wanted to see Hannah's baby pictures, but Emily had just read Penelope the riot act for snooping and didn't want to be guilty of the same thing.

Penelope could tell Emily was tempted by the offer of a sneak peek into her daughter's childhood, but she was still hesitating. "Come on," Penelope encouraged. "You know you want to."

"I really do," Emily admitted, giving in to temptation.

That was all Penelope needed to hear to come around behind Emily's desk and take over her laptop. With a few clicks of the mouse, the tech analyst had Sarah Johnson's old Facebook account up on the screen and was gushing to Emily about how precious her mini-me was. Emily knew she was biased, but she had to agree.

The adoptive mom's Facebook had monthly baby pictures taken every month for the first twelve months of Hannah's life, but it also had pictures of the girl growing up – birthday parties, family vacations, the customary picture taken of the girl standing on the front porch on the first day of school every year from pre-school through sixth grade. Sarah died before Hannah started seventh grade so that was where the pictures stopped.

Some of the pictures showed Emily a different side to Hannah's personality. There was a picture of ten year old Hannah and an older boy Emily would later learn was Steve's nephew wearing swimsuits and standing at the top of a cliff. It looked like they were about to jump off the cliff into the lake below. There was no sign of fear on the girl's face. In spite of knowing Hannah had made it to fourteen with all of her limbs intact, the picture made Emily's heart skip a beat. Her kid was a daredevil. There was also the photo of a younger Hannah on a snowboard at the top of a snow-covered mountain grinning widely. Hannah clearly wasn't afraid of heights.

True to the tech analyst's word, Hannah had a big, beaming smile on her face in every picture. It was bittersweet for Emily to see so many happy moments that she'd missed out on, but she was glad for the photographic evidence that her kid had the kind of childhood Emily had always wanted her to have. And, as Penelope pointed out, there would be a lot of moments Emily would be able to be there for in the future.

**A/N:** Thanks for reading and to everyone who reviewed! I lost part of what I had written for this chapter due to technical difficulties, but still had Emily's conversation with Penelope which was the first half. I wanted to go ahead and post it even though it's on the shorter side. Penelope was really hard for me to write so hopefully she doesn't seem too out of character. I tried my best to keep her in character.


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N:** Thanks for reading and reviewing. This is the rest of what I wanted to include in the last chapter, but had to re-write because I lost most of it. It's set during Season 14x10 Flesh and Blood and there are spoilers for that episode if you haven't seen it yet.

**Chapter 13**

After getting a call that cut the first date she'd had in months – and a date she'd already cancelled numerous times – short, Emily Prentiss was at Quantico late at night instead of in bed with a certain handsome and charming Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI's Washington, D.C. field office.

Although it wasn't apparent at first, JJ eventually made the connection between their current case and a case from eleven years ago in Milwaukee – a case where Emily was instrumental in the arrest. The unsub was David Smith, the son of serial killer Joe Smith. Like his father, David was cutting the hearts out of the chests of his victims.

Joe Smith had conditioned his young son, David, to accept the revolving door of his female victims as maternal figures, even if it was only for forty-eight hours before Joe killed them. As a brunette female authority figure, Emily was Joe Smith's type. She volunteered to go to the door alone to see if she could get David to invite her in while Joe was preoccupied with his latest victim – one who should still be alive because it hadn't been forty-eight hours yet. The goal was to get in and save the woman he'd taken.

The second Emily set foot in that house in Milwaukee she became a maternal figure in David's mind. Emily didn't help matters by keeping in touch with the boy through phone calls – phone calls that stopped abruptly when Ian Doyle escaped from prison and her life as she knew it ended.

She'd only been on the team for just under a year at the time. In some ways her mindset was still that of the intelligence operative who infiltrated Ian Doyle's organization. Back then Emily didn't really see the difference between checking in on Declan Doyle, a boy she'd known for almost two years and one who she cared about, and checking in on David Smith, a boy she'd had very limited interaction with but felt for nonetheless. Honestly, David reminded her a little of Declan – they were both blonde, close in age, no mother in the picture and had fathers who were killers. That was part of the reason why Emily wanted to help David Smith – he reminded her of another little boy she cared a great deal about.

Under different circumstances, it could have been Declan following in his father's footsteps, but Emily got him out before Ian Doyle had done any damage that couldn't be undone. She couldn't help thinking that things might have been different for David if she had done more for him. Maybe he wouldn't be following in his father's footsteps now if she had.

She knew there were only two ways this would end for David. She didn't want it to end with his death, whether that was by his own hand or suicide by cop. She wanted him to let her help him, even if it would mean prison time. She wanted a chance to do for him now what she meant to do before.

* * *

For the second time in her life, David Smith had a gun pointed at her. The first time it was her own gun. He was just a child then. Now he was an adult and she knew he had killed before, but Emily still didn't think he would shoot her. His hand was shaking. He didn't have it in him to pull the trigger. He wasn't hard, he wasn't cold.

Emily holstered her weapon and held her hands out in a placating gesture as she slowly approached him. "If you don't want to take my help, then you're gonna have to shoot me."

"Please don't make me do this," David said with a desperate look on his face.

But no one was making him do anything, not this time. He didn't have his father or Dr. Rhodes whispering in his ear. What he did now would show who he really was.

Emily shook her head. "I'm not gonna make you do anything you don't want to do." She took another step toward him, continuing to close the distance between them.

"Emily, _no_," he said, his voice rising with panic. She was almost to him. He would either have to shoot her or let her get to him, and he knew it. She wasn't backing down.

"Go ahead. Do what you have to do. Shoot me," Emily said quietly, "if that's who you really are."

She knew what her words would do to him. He didn't want to be like his father. He even went to a therapist because he was afraid he shared the same violent urges as his father. That wasn't who he wanted to be.

He wanted help. He was practically crying out for it.

And then David Smith was literally crying as he surrendered to her.

* * *

"How'd you know he wouldn't shoot you?" Rossi asked in a deceptively calm tone.

David Rossi was anything but calm on the inside. Emily just walked right up to an armed unsub and practically dared him to shoot her. He thought her actions were reckless and stupid – and he knew she wasn't stupid, far from it. But there was no other word for what she did in there.

Even if Emily knew the unsub wouldn't shoot her (and she couldn't really _know_ that), David Smith could have easily turned the gun on Dr. Rhodes. The mountain of paperwork and increased scrutiny on the BAU and its Unit Chief that would have resulted from a civilian's death wasn't what worried Rossi. It was the fact that Emily could have been killed that scared him, and that fear was quickly turning into a volatile combination of anger and frustration in the hot-tempered Italian.

With what they did, they always ran the risk of getting hurt or even killed on the job, but there was no reason to tempt fate the way Emily had. Rossi had half a mind to ask her what the hell she was thinking and really lay into her, but in the end, her instincts were right and no one got hurt so he held back and didn't say what he really wanted to say.

"His hand was shaking," Emily answered simply. David Smith was terrified of the gun in his hands and of what he could do with it. He looked more like a scared, traumatized kid than a ruthless killer. She'd known just from looking at him that he wasn't going to shoot her.

"His hand was shaking?" Rossi repeated incredulously, his voice slightly higher than normal. "His hand was shaking?!" That wasn't a reason to walk up to someone who had a gun! If anything, it was all the more reason to proceed with caution. It was a great big neon sign that the unsub was losing control.

"He's not a killer," Emily said, her eyes sad as she thought of the boy she felt like she'd failed. If she'd done more for him, things could have been different. Their four victims might still be alive, and David might not be looking at life in prison.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I must have him confused with someone else," Rossi said sarcastically with an edge to his voice. "Because the David Smith I'm thinking of killed four people, and that was just this week."

The snark was nothing new for Rossi, but the sharp, cutting edge in his voice wasn't something Emily had heard from him before, at least not directed at her. She looked at him with a startled expression. "You heard Dr. Rhodes in there. She was pulling the strings."

"Maybe she manipulated him, but he's a human being, not a puppet. He's capable of thinking for himself," Rossi told her.

"The things he's done…they weren't his idea," Emily said, shaking her head. "When he was a child, he had to take part in his father's ruse to lure women in or his father would turn his rage on him."

"He's not a child anymore," Rossi said pointedly. It wasn't that he had no sympathy for David Smith because he did, but David wasn't the child Emily remembered - he was a grown man Emily was still treating with kid-gloves. She obviously felt guilty that she couldn't save him from himself and that guilt was impairing her judgment now in Rossi's not-so-humble opinion.

"No. He's an adult who went to a therapist for help, but instead of helping him, she manipulated him into doing her bidding," Emily said. "But even after he killed those men, he didn't develop a taste for it. He doesn't enjoy killing. That doesn't absolve him of guilt - I'm not saying it does. All I'm saying is he didn't actually want to hurt anyone. He was only doing what _she_ told him to. He wasn't going to shoot me because no one was telling him to shoot me."

"You did!" Rossi yelled in frustration, finally losing control of his temper. "My God, Emily. You practically dared him to shoot you. And I'd just like to point out that no one held a gun to his head and _made_ him kidnap Dr. Rhodes. He was the one with a gun to _her_ head. Pinocchio did that all on his own because he felt betrayed by her, not because anyone told him to."

It wasn't like David Rossi to be critical of her – quite the opposite, in fact. He was usually one of her biggest supporters. That was probably why Emily just stood there in stunned silence while he yelled at her.

"His rage wasn't directed toward me," Emily said quietly.

"He could have turned his rage on you. You're another maternal figure he feels betrayed by." Rossi took a deep breath as he tried to rein in his temper. He didn't mean to lose it in the first place. "Now I know your instincts were right in this case. They usually are," he acknowledged with a rueful smile that didn't last very long before he went back to being dead serious. "But I don't care what your instincts are telling you. You _never_ dare an unsub who is armed and dangerous to shoot you," he chided Emily, not caring that she was his boss just then. She was still the younger agent he'd been somewhat of a mentor to and someone he cared about. "The next one might just take you up on it. We already buried you once. Don't make us do it again."

"Hey," Emily said, reaching out to squeeze Rossi's shoulder reassuringly as the real reason for his anger became clear to her. It wasn't that he was questioning her judgment on the case. He _was_ doing that and she didn't like it, but it was more that he was afraid David Smith would shoot her. "I'm okay. I knew what I was doing."

"What was that exactly? Trying to give me a heart attack?" Rossi asked her mock-sternly, his expression softening.

He sounded more paternal than professional, and it filled Emily with an unexpected warmth. She felt…loved. She knew he loved her – he didn't need to yell at her for doing something dangerous for her to know that, but she really felt it in that moment.

"Just trying to give you more grey hair," Emily teased with a smirk, trying to slip back into their normal dynamic with that response. She didn't want him to be mad at her and was glad he seemed to be done yelling, even if he was only yelling because he cared.

"I don't think I have any hair left that's _not_ grey, working with you as long as I have," Rossi retorted with a good-natured smile.

Rossi thought about all the times Emily Prentiss probably had contributed to his full head of grey hair…there was the time they could hear Benjamin Cyrus beating the crap out of her, the time she went after Ian Doyle alone, the time she risked her life to defuse the bomb strapped to Will's chest, and the time Mr. Scratch had her. She'd always had a tendency to be reckless, and she almost always demonstrated it by risking her life to save someone else's, but this time it was a completely unnecessary risk. This time she wasn't saving Reid or the team or Will. She was still being brave and noble, but she was doing it for no reason – at least not one that was good enough, not by a long shot. The only person who'd been in any real danger when they arrived on the scene was Dr. Rhodes, and there was a chance they could have still saved her life if Emily had followed protocol instead of going off-book on this one. That was what had been different and why he was so frustrated with her this time around.

David Rossi wasn't going to bury Emily again, not if he could help it.

**A/N:** Thanks again for reading! The date I referred to at the very beginning was, of course, with Mendoza. While I thought Emily's date with Mendoza and really all of their interactions in Season 14 were cute, the end game relationship in this will still be Prentiss / Hotch, but it will be a very slow build and romantic relationships aren't the focus of this story. Mendoza will make a few more appearances though. Next chapter will be mostly Emily and Hannah.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 14**

"Prentiss," Emily answered her phone as she slipped out of bed, trying not to wake Andrew.

She invited him over for breakfast when they wrapped the case in the early hours of the morning, but they'd spent more time in the bedroom than the kitchen. Emily picked his shirt up off her bedroom floor and slipped it on, fumbling with the buttons in the dark.

Hannah had exchanged a few text messages with Emily, but this was the first time she'd called the woman and the clipped professional greeting threw her off. "Emily?" Hannah said uncertainly.

Emily closed her eyes for a fraction of a second when she recognized her daughter's voice and heard the uncertainty in it. She'd answered the phone after the first ring without even looking at caller ID because she didn't want it to wake Andrew up. "Hannah. Yes, it's me," Emily said, adopting a tone that was a lot warmer and less professional as she closed her bedroom door behind her.

"Are you at work?" Hannah asked hesitantly.

"No, I'm not at work," Emily told her child.

"Oh, okay." Hannah moved on to the reason for her call. "I know we were going to do something this afternoon, but can we hang out next weekend instead?"

"You're blowing me off _again_?" Emily said in a tone of disbelief. "Really?"

She recognized the irony in it. How many times had she blown Andrew off? And now her kid was doing the same thing to her.

The man currently snoring in Emily's bed had the patience of a saint. But Emily wasn't as patient as Andrew Mendoza. She'd waited thirteen years and didn't want to go weeks at a time without seeing her daughter now.

"I'm sorry," Hannah apologized, her sincerity coming through over the phone even though Emily couldn't see her facial expression or body language. "I have to study. For real this time," Hannah added, knowing her birth mother might not believe her since she'd used school as an excuse to get out of brunch just last weekend. She didn't know it, but she sounded stressed enough to be convincing. "Finals are next week, and it's almost next week."

"Can't you take a study break?" Emily asked, trying to keep her disappointment out of her voice. Regardless of what Hannah was saying, Emily knew there was no way the teenager was going to study all day Saturday and Sunday without taking a break, and she wanted to see her kid. "I'll caffeinate you," Emily offered enticingly.

"You're a bad influence," Hannah told the older woman in a slightly amused tone. She thought about how much she still had to do before Monday when she had her algebra final and her health final, but the idea of a coffee break was too tempting. "Yes to caffeine, but can we go to this coffee shop by my house? And only for, like, an hour." The teenager was rationalizing it to herself as she agreed.

Emily smiled triumphantly. That was all she wanted – to spend time with her kid. "An hour? All right," Emily conceded in a deliberately resigned tone, feigning disappointment, "but that's not enough time to kick your ass at Scrabble again."

Hannah rolled her eyes even though Emily couldn't see her. "You won one game."

Emily chuckled softly at the slight annoyance in her kid's voice. "Okay, what time should I pick you up?"

"I can walk," Hannah said. "It's right by my house."

Emily decided to rephrase that and simply told the girl what time she would pick her up. "Bring your French if there's anything I can help you with," she instructed before hanging up.

* * *

"Hey. Where's your French?" Emily questioned when her kid emerged from the front door empty-handed.

"It would be kind of hard for you to help me with French when I haven't started studying for it yet," Hannah mumbled reluctantly, averting her eyes. She had kind of hoped Emily would just drop it if she didn't bring her backpack, but no such luck.

"There's no time like the present," Emily said pointedly, raising her eyebrows. No wonder her kid was so stressed if she'd waited until the last minute to start studying.

Hannah let out a long-suffering sigh. "My French final is on Thursday so it's the least of my concerns right now. First I have to get through algebra, health, biology, English, and history. There's only so much room in my brain," the teenager said dramatically.

"Go get your French," Emily ordered with a half-laugh at the teenager's logic. Hannah would need to know all of it eventually, and in this case, eventually was only days away.

"You're bossy today," Hannah told her birth mother, not really complaining. She wasn't too bothered by it because of how lightly the order was delivered…it was hardly even an order. The girl was already turning back around to the door to follow her birth mother's 'orders' even as she spoke. She was the one who'd asked for Emily's help with French originally, and she knew the woman was just trying to help her, even if the help was unwanted at that particular moment.

"Well, apparently you need an engraved invitation to study for your French final," Emily replied dryly.

The teenager glanced over her shoulder to give her birth mother an unimpressed look and then opened the door. "You can come in," she said, holding the door open for Emily as she expertly blocked the doorway so the dog couldn't get out.

"Where's your dad?" Emily questioned as she followed the girl into the kitchen where Hannah's notebooks and textbooks were spread out on the table. The profiler saw no sign of Steve, and it looked like the teenager had taken over the entire downstairs.

"He's running errands, which is code for Christmas shopping," Hannah said as she grabbed her French textbook.

"What'd you ask Santa for?" Emily asked her daughter curiously.

Emily was struggling with what to get the girl she'd only known for a month. She just knew she didn't want to be like her own mother. Elizabeth Prentiss had always given her impersonal yet expensive gifts that just showed how little she actually knew her only child. The worst was when her mother missed something – a first day at school, a school play, an awards ceremony – and then lavished Emily with gifts as a way to make up for it. Even as a child, Emily recognized those gifts for what they were – bribes. Throwing money at her hadn't made her problems with her mother go away.

Emily felt a little like she had thirteen Christmases to make up for, but she knew there was nothing she could buy Hannah that would make up for all the times she wasn't there. She couldn't buy her daughter's affections and didn't want the girl to think she was trying to bribe her. It hadn't worked with Emily when she was a teenager, and she didn't think it would work with Hannah.

"AirPods," Hannah answered Emily's question distractedly as she packed her backpack. "Cords are so old school."

"What's the Walkman I had when I was your age then?" Emily asked the overly dramatic girl in an amused tone.

"An antique," Hannah said with a small, mocking smile. "From the olden days when shoulder pads and big hair were cool." She didn't know how old Emily was, but, based on her own birthdate and the fact that Emily had graduated from college and was working for Interpol when she got pregnant, the fourteen year old guessed correctly that the woman would have been in high school sometime in the eighties.

"Hey!" Emily cried in mock-offense even as she let out a little laugh. She walked right into that one.

"Did you listen to New Kids on the Block on your Walkman?" Hannah asked with a teasing grin, choosing the ultimate cheesy boy band of the eighties because she figured any self-respecting woman would be embarrassed to admit to liking them.

"No," Emily told her. "The only boy band I ever listened to was The Beatles." She glanced at her kid with amusement in her eyes. "What about you? Any One Direction on your iPod?" Emily teased gently, turning the tables on her kid.

"No! I don't like One Direction," Hannah replied emphatically, making a face. She looked at Emily to see if the woman believed her.

"Riiight," Emily said slowly with heavy skepticism in her voice. She was enjoying riling her kid up after the girl made fun of her 'old' age.

"I don't," the fourteen year old insisted. "I mean, I like some of Liam Payne's songs," she admitted. "But he's the only one I like."

"Oh, okay. You just like one of them," Emily said with a small, knowing smirk. "Do you just like his music or do you _like_ him?" The mother teased her young teenage daughter obnoxiously.

Hannah shrugged her backpack over her shoulder and fixed her birth mother with an unamused stare. "Okay, new topic."

* * *

After the mother and daughter settled down at a table in the back of the coffee shop with their drinks, Emily gave Hannah a minute to get situated and then told the girl to get her French out.

"Okay, so tell me about this test," Emily said.

"I don't know. It's just a normal test. Vocab, fill in the blank." Hannah shrugged. She hesitated before deciding not to mention the French paper she had yet to write that was part of her final grade - a fairly big part actually. She hadn't expected Emily to act like such a…well, parent, nagging her about not waiting until the last minute to study. She didn't want to get the woman started on the unwritten paper that was due in five days. "The hard part will be the oral test," Hannah continued. "It's just, like, a conversation, but there's no English at all."

"No! There's no English in French class?" Emily said, mock-scandalized.

Hannah blushed and failed to hide a sheepish smile, realizing how silly it sounded when Emily put it like that. "No, really though. We have to talk to her for ten minutes with no English even if we don't know a word or don't understand something. She's grading us on accent and pronunciation and stuff."

"Talk to me in French," Emily told her child. "It'll be good practice."

Hannah raised her eyebrows. "You want me to talk to you about animals or sports?" She said skeptically. "Because those are the words I know."

"Let me see that," Emily said, taking the girl's binder from her.

Emily took a moment to look through Hannah's old vocab quizzes, all of which the girl had gotten A's on except for the most recent quiz which had a big red 'C' on the top of it. The woman noticed the date – the quiz was the week Hannah found out she was adopted. The reason for the sudden drop in her daughter's grades was obvious to the profiler. It made Emily wonder if all the upset of the last few weeks was why her child wasn't more prepared for her upcoming finals.

Emily knew Hannah cared about her grades, but school was probably the last thing on the fourteen year old's mind when she had just found out she was adopted. The girl was trying to understand why Emily didn't keep her and was struggling with the knowledge that the father whose genes she had was a bad guy. While the teenager no longer seemed broody and subdued, Emily knew it had been a rough couple of weeks for her.

She also had to take into account that it was Hannah's first semester of high school and quite possibly the first time the girl had to take a true final exam – one that was worth enough to make or break her grade in the class. Some of it might have less to do with everything Hannah had to deal with over the last few weeks and instead may just be a normal part of growing up and learning how to manage her time and deal with the stress and anxiety.

Either way, Emily was determined to help the girl. No child of hers should have to worry about her grade in French, not with Emily as a mom.

Emily looked up from the vocab quizzes on things like numbers, colors, animals, members of the family, and sports. "Tell me about yourself. Tell me about your family. You should know enough to do that." It would help her daughter prepare for her oral exam and was also a way for Emily get to know the girl better.

"Okay," Hannah agreed with a nervous laugh, feeling awkward and self-conscious. She didn't really know what to say about herself and was limited in what she could say by the French she knew.

The teenager took a sip of her peppermint mocha to buy herself some time as she thought of something to say. She was pretty good at memorization so the vocab words themselves weren't a problem, but using them in an actual conversation was different. She could usually answer a direct question in class. That wasn't what Emily wanted her to do though.

When Hannah quit stalling and started talking, it was the very basic phrases she had learned month one of high school French and had down by now. She recited her name, her age, and her grade in school in a monotone. She went on to say she was an only child and mentioned that she had a dog. There was nothing she said that Emily didn't already know.

Emily started asking questions – in French – to try to turn it into a more natural conversation. She could almost see the wheels turning in the girl's head as she mentally translated Emily's questions from French to English before answering them. At Emily's prompting, Hannah described her extended family in very simple terms. She knew enough French to list off various relatives, give a physical description that included hair color and eye color, and use an adjective like 'nice' or 'funny' but that was about it. Hannah's confidence in what she was saying waned as she lost control of the conversation. She couldn't answer a question Emily asked about what her older cousins were majoring in at college. She didn't know how to say Mechanical Engineering or Business in French. That was when the young teenager finally gave up, knowing they'd exhausted the French she knew.

"And that's the extent of my limited knowledge of the French language," Hannah said dryly.

"If you ask questions instead of just answering them, it'll take some of the heat off you," Emily suggested. "We should do this again a few more times before your test to get you more comfortable with it."

Hannah groaned. "You do realize I have five other subjects to study for?"

"Do you need help with anything else?" Emily asked kindly.

"No," Hannah said quickly, not wanting a repeat of what happened with French. "Wasn't this supposed to be a study break? I'm still waiting for the break," Hannah said lightly.

Emily rolled her eyes but couldn't suppress an indulgent smile. "It was one conversation, not an all-nighter."

"How long did it take you to become fluent?" Hannah wondered.

"In French?" Emily clarified.

"Yeah," Hannah said with a half-laugh at the idea that she would need to clarify which foreign language she was referring to – just how many languages did Emily speak? Hannah gave Emily a speculative look as she thought about how many different countries the woman had lived in. "Why? How many languages do you speak?"

"Fluently? Let's see…French, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic," Emily said. "I know enough Russian to get by, but my Russian's not very good."

And here the young teenager thought just being fluent in French was impressive. "Your Russian's not very good?" Hannah repeated incredulously. "You speak _five_ languages. And that's not counting English so you actually speak six languages." Meanwhile the ninth grader could barely have an intelligent conversation in French. "I feel dumb now," the fourteen year old said wryly. "Are you sure we're related?" She meant it as a joke, but Emily didn't think it was funny.

"Don't say that." Emily met her daughter's gaze and held it. "I spent a lot of time in France growing up. When I lived in Paris, I heard people speaking French in everyday conversation all day every day. You spend, what, an hour a day in a classroom learning French? And you were right - a lot of what you've learned would never come up in normal conversation. It would be hard for anyone to have a ten minute conversation with what you've learned so far."

Hannah nodded but didn't look convinced. "So how long did it take? For you to become fluent, I mean."

"French was one of the first languages I learned. I can't remember how old I was when I learned, but I was pretty young. They say it's easier to learn a new language the younger you are, and I guess it's true. I can't really remember a time when I couldn't speak French," Emily told her. "But for some of the other countries I lived in growing up, it felt like by the time I finally learned the language, we were already moving because my mom had a new posting."

"The exciting life and times of an ambassador's daughter," Hannah mused with a small smile.

Emily scoffed slightly. "It wasn't that exciting."

"Where are you going for Christmas?" Hannah asked curiously. "Your parents are still in Europe, right?"

"Yes, they are, but I'm staying here. I may have to work," Emily said simply, using work as a convenient excuse for avoiding her parents on Christmas. "Bad guys don't take the holidays off," the profiler tried to joke.

"Oh," Hannah said. She couldn't imagine not spending Christmas with her family. She frowned as she wondered if her birth mother would be alone, trying to come up with a tactful way to ask. "But what if you don't have to work? I mean, maybe you could spend it with us," Hannah offered tentatively. She didn't think anyone should be alone on Christmas, and it made her sad to think of Emily being alone for the holidays.

Emily would love nothing more than to spend Christmas with her child, but she didn't want to intrude on her daughter's plans with her adoptive family – people who might not roll out the welcome mat for Emily. "What are you guys doing?" Emily asked a question of her own to distract her teenager so she wouldn't have to respond to the impromptu invitation.

"We used to go to Chicago every other year, but now we just spend Christmas here with my dad's side of the family," Hannah replied. "My grandma always has everyone over for food and presents."

That reminded Emily that she still needed ideas for the girl. "What else do you want for Christmas? AirPods can't be the only thing."

"I don't know," Hannah said with a shrug. She didn't actually want that much, but she also didn't want Emily to feel like she had to get her something expensive. Most of the things she wanted weren't exactly cheap.

The days when Hannah had a long list of toys on her Christmas list were long gone. She mainly just wanted clothes now, but she didn't want other people to buy clothes for her. She needed to try things on to make sure they fit because her size varied across different stores and styles. She also didn't want her fashion-challenged dad picking out clothes for her. She'd encouraged him to get on the gift card bandwagon and usually got gift cards for all her favorite stores. Other than gift cards, Hannah wanted AirPods, an expensive makeup mirror, an Urban Decay eyeshadow palette, and new Uggs - none of which she felt comfortable asking the birth mother she only met a month ago for. She wouldn't expect anyone but her family to spend that kind of money on her. Even though technically Emily was family, it was different.

It hadn't even occurred to Hannah that Emily would get her anything, but it did now and she didn't know what to do. She wondered if she should tell the woman that she didn't have to get her anything but decided not to in case she was wrong and that _wasn't_ why Emily was asking.

But, of course, it was exactly why Emily was asking, and the profiler was frustrated with the lack of response. Emily Prentiss interrogated hardened criminals as part of her day job but couldn't get her teenage daughter to tell her what she wanted for Christmas. The fourteen year old didn't give her anything helpful so the mother still had no idea what to get her kid for Christmas when she dropped the girl off at home.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 15**

The family-owned Greek restaurant was a total hole-in-the-wall. It was nondescript, even a little rundown-looking on the outside, and was located in a strip mall, but the food was good. That combined with the restaurant's convenient location near Quantico made it a favorite of the BAU team on the rare occasion they were in town and not out on a case.

The restaurant was Hotch's choice, but Emily knew he only picked it because it would be convenient for her. She was actually surprised he chose it because they ran the risk of running into the others there, but she asked around and was confident that no one on the team would be crashing her lunch with Hotch – not that she would have minded if the team joined them. Emily just had a feeling Hotch _would_ mind. The only one on the team that their former Unit Chief really stayed in touch with was David Rossi.

Hotch only reconnected with her because _she_ reached out to _him_ for legal advice. Emily didn't expect anything more than that from him and was surprised when he asked her to grab lunch – a lunch she had to cancel because of a case. This was their third attempt at meeting for lunch. Apparently the third time was the charm.

Emily spotted Hotch in a booth at the very back of the restaurant. He was dressed as casually as she'd ever seen him in a polo shirt and dark wash jeans. He stood politely when he saw her. She gave him a quick hug and then slid into the booth across from him.

"I'm glad you could make it," Hotch said. His tone and expression were neutral. There wasn't the slightest hint of the sarcasm or frustration Emily might expect from someone she'd cancelled on two times already.

It was no wonder Emily Prentiss had so few close personal friends – people had a tendency to stop making plans with her because she blew everything else off any time the team had a case. She ended up cancelling on people a lot more often than not, and eventually they just gave up on making plans with her.

Relationships were even harder. As patient as Andrew had been so far, it was usually only a matter of time before the patience of any men who had ever been in her life romantically ran out. Their egos couldn't take coming in second to her career – and they always seemed to come in second. She'd had to think about leaving her life – and Mark – in London to take the position as Unit Chief of the BAU, but in the end, her relationship with Mark hadn't been enough for her to turn the opportunity down.

No one could really understand the demands of her job and her schedule, not unless they'd been in her shoes – and as former Unit Chief of the BAU, Aaron Hotchner was the only person who had actually been in her shoes. It was nice for Emily not to have to apologize for once.

"Me, too," Emily told him with a warm smile. "Thanks for coming all the way out here."

"It's no problem," Hotch replied easily. "I already ordered for you. Greek salad, right?"

"Am I that predictable?" Emily asked him. It would have annoyed her if it were a date ordering for her without bothering to ask her what she wanted, but she knew Hotch was just being conscientious of her time constraints. And after all the times the team had eaten there, he knew what she liked.

"Just your lunch order," Hotch told her. It was true – they'd known each other for a long time, but, in a lot of ways, Emily Prentiss was still a mystery to him. Of everyone on the team, Hotch and Emily were the two who kept their personal lives more personal.

"Let me guess – you got a chicken bowl?" Emily said with raised eyebrows.

"We already know I'm predictable," Hotch said dryly.

"You are a creature of habit," Emily agreed.

They caught up on what they'd been up to the last few weeks, Emily's work excluded, while they waited for their food. Because her daughter was the reason Emily reached out to him in the first place, Hotch eventually asked how things were going with Hannah. They were commiserating over the challenge of shopping for a teenager at Christmastime when the waiter brought their food.

"Jack thinks that because I'm not working, money's an issue. He won't tell me what he really wants," Hotch complained. "He just keeps saying he doesn't need anything. I've tried telling him that between my retirement and Haley's life insurance, we're fine. I don't want my son to worry about money, but he's always been a worrier."

"That is so sweet but also so sad," Emily said fondly with a sad smile. "What are you going to do?"

"He always wanted a pet when he was younger, but with my work schedule and how often I traveled, I just couldn't justify it. I was thinking of surprising him with a pet of some sort. Not a dog," Hotch said quickly. He didn't want to deal with housebreaking a puppy. If he stepped in a pile of anything, his son's pet would be pet-non-grata in their apartment. He ignored Emily's knowing smirk and continued thoughtfully, "Perhaps an aquarium with tropical fish."

"Oh, he'll love that," Emily told him.

"And it will surprise him," Hotch said. "I don't envy you shopping for a teenage girl. They're even harder to buy for than teenage boys."

"How many teenage girls are you buying for?" Emily asked teasingly.

"Just one," Hotch replied. "Jessica's daughter, my niece. She's impossible to buy for. She returns everything anyone gets her. I usually just give her cash."

"That's not helpful," Emily said ruefully.

"Sorry," Hotch told her.

They moved on to upcoming holiday plans. Hotch and Jack were spending Christmas with Haley's family. Hotch hesitated to bring up Emily's mother, but he had to admit he was curious how the Ambassador had taken the news of her newfound grandchild.

"What about you? Will you be seeing your parents?" Hotch questioned after filling Emily in on his own holiday plans.

"I'd rather spend Christmas with the Grinch himself," Emily deadpanned.

Hotch's lips twitched, but he suppressed the small smile. Because he was part of the Ambassador's Security detail early in his career, Aaron Hotchner knew Ambassador Prentiss as well as anyone who wasn't family could ever really know a career politician.

Elizabeth Prentiss was always perfectly polite to her staff, Hotch included, but she was never warm or friendly. She asked all the right questions to seem interested in other people – or at least the people she needed - but she didn't really care about the answers. Every conversation, every interaction was calculated – a means to a political end. Whenever anyone asked after her daughter back then, Ambassador Prentiss told them that her daughter was off at Yale, but she never spoke of Emily outside of her academic achievements. She never spoke of her daughter as a person, but rather as a list of accomplishments.

The Ambassador had exacting standards for her staff, and Hotch got the sense she'd been every bit as demanding of her only child as she was of her staff. Aaron Hotchner had no doubt that the woman loved Emily, but she didn't know how to show it. There was nothing even remotely maternal or motherly about the Ambassador. Hotch couldn't picture the woman as a grandmother.

"Does she know she's a grandmother?" Hotch asked Emily.

"No," Emily answered flatly. "It's…not exactly the kind of thing you put in your Christmas card." She sighed wearily, knowing how her mother would react to the news. The only thing her mother would care about was the scandal of Emily getting pregnant while she was undercover and then giving her kid up for adoption.

Hotch lifted his gaze to meet Emily's. "No, it isn't," he conceded with the faintest trace of amusement in his voice. He knew Emily's mother was in Europe and probably didn't visit much. A face-to-face conversation with the Ambassador would take some doing – and he didn't get the impression Emily would be going out of her way to make it happen. "Will you be going to Dave's for Christmas then?"

Emily nodded. "Yes. Even though he won't let me help with anything," she grumbled good-naturedly.

"And with good reason," Hotch told her. He didn't think Emily would ever live down the time she burnt the Thanksgiving turkey to a crisp.

"You burn one turkey, and you're banned for life," Emily said with a self-deprecating smile.

"Have your cooking skills improved since then?" Hotch inquired with raised eyebrows.

Emily blushed slightly and lowered her gaze as she remembered the disastrous dinner she tried to cook for Andrew Mendoza on their first date.

"I'll take that as a no," Hotch said, observing Emily's flushed cheeks. "Is there a story there?"

Emily begrudgingly told the story of completely butchering Rossi's grandmother's recipe, making fun of herself in the process.

Hotch chuckled politely, but he was fixated on one thing. "You're seeing someone?"

As long as they had known each other and worked together, Hotch had never known Emily to have a serious relationship. He knew she dated. He had heard Emily, JJ, Penelope, and even Morgan talking about their dating lives in the breakroom. Where JJ had gotten serious with Will and Penelope had been engaged to Kevin, Emily had only ever told stories of particularly bad dates, never anything serious. Hotch could tell from the way she spoke that she really liked whoever it was she was seeing now, and he didn't like it, but he wasn't ready to admit why that was, not even to himself.

"Only if by seeing someone, you mean I've cancelled on him twice as many times as we've actually hung out," Emily replied easily.

"I'm glad to know it's not just me you're cancelling on," Hotch said mildly.

Emily tilted her head to the side and gave him a look. "You know it's not," she told him. "You remember what it's like."

Hotch nodded. "I do. The person you're seeing - does he understand?"

"Yes. He's actually an agent," Emily explained.

Hotch frowned. "Emily…anti-fraternization rules exist for a reason."

"And that reason's name is Dave," Emily joked, feeling a little uncomfortable with the direction this conversation was taking. She was talking to Hotch as a friend, but it was starting to feel like she was talking to her boss even though they both knew he wasn't her boss anymore. She squared her shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. "But anti-fraternization rules don't apply here. We work in different units out of different offices."

"How'd you meet?" Hotch questioned.

"On a case," Emily answered reluctantly, not wanting her former supervisor to judge her for that. When she saw the disapproval in his expression, she felt like she had to defend herself. "The same way JJ met Will," she reminded him.

"That's different," Hotch said dismissively.

Emily stared at him incredulously. "How?"

Hotch hadn't questioned JJ's professionalism when the blonde started seeing Will after meeting him when they were in New Orleans for a case. The only difference here was that it was Emily and not JJ they were talking about, but Hotch would never actually say that. He was only just starting to realize it himself.

Emily Prentiss went from being the Ambassador's daughter to being his subordinate and a member of his team. Aaron Hotchner would never even have considered entering into a relationship with a member of his team. Unlike some people (namely David Rossi), Hotch actually followed the FBI's anti-fraternization rules to the letter. He believed the rules were there for a reason. A romantic relationship between two team members would have changed the team dynamic, and there was just no room for emotions to cloud their judgment in the field.

Emily had always been off limits. In the time that he'd known her, Hotch had never thought of her as an available woman despite the fact that she'd always been available. She was always too focused on her career to make time for a relationship. Hotch never really had to hear Emily talk about other men or see her in a relationship, and now that he did, he didn't like it.

Hotch realized he needed to give Emily an answer, but he didn't have one. He didn't know why the idea of Emily seeing someone bothered him so much. "I…shouldn't have said anything. It's none of my business."

Emily stiffened, her spine straightening and her hand clenching tightly around her fork. "No. I want to know. How is it different exactly?" Emily demanded in a hard tone, never one to back down from a fight.

"Will's not an agent," Hotch said simply, making an excuse that he knew he wouldn't have accepted if the situation were reversed and it were his professionalism being questioned.

"I'm not breaking any rules," Emily insisted defensively. She tried to cover the hurt she felt with an indignant glare. She cared about Aaron Hotchner's opinion of her, and the fact that he thought she would jeopardize her career for a guy she just met made her wonder what he really thought of her.

If he didn't do something to salvage this lunch and fast, Hotch knew Emily would still be mad when she left. It took them a month to find a time for lunch when Emily _wasn't _angry with him. He couldn't let her leave on this note.

"Emily," he said gently. "I'm sorry. I was surprised to hear that the person you're seeing is an agent." He paused as he considered what he wanted to say next, not wanting it to be taken the wrong way. "It's just that…you of all people usually keep your personal life separate from your professional life. I wasn't expecting that, and I reacted badly."

Emily knew he wouldn't have apologized unless he meant it. He never said anything he didn't mean - that's why his earlier comment still stung. "Maybe that's why I'm still single," she said with a rueful smile, trying to meet him halfway even though she wasn't ready to forgive him yet. "It's hard to find someone who understands the demands of the job and isn't in this line of work."

Hotch filed away the fact that she referred to herself as single even though she said she was seeing someone for further analysis. Maybe it wasn't as serious as he thought. "Haley never understood," he offered quietly.

"Is dating easier now that you're not working?" Emily asked him.

Hotch shook his head. "Not really. There aren't a lot of women out there who aren't scared off by the fact that I have a teenage son and a dead wife."

"You might want to ease into the dead wife," Emily suggested.

Lunch ended with them swapping stories of bad first dates, the earlier tension all but gone. Emily was laughing as Hotch gave her the profile of the last woman he went out with, who he diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder based on the two and a half dinner where the woman talked about nothing but herself.

"We should do this again sometime after the holidays," Hotch suggested tentatively when they were standing in front of the restaurant. He wasn't sure where he stood with her. She never said whether she accepted his apology or not, but she let the matter drop and had been smiling and laughing toward the end of the meal. He thought they were okay, but he couldn't be sure.

"I'd like that," Emily told him.

* * *

The week went by slowly. With no case, it was all paperwork and internal meetings. It was nice to have a week at home, but they were all field agents for a reason – not one person on the team liked sitting at a desk all day. By Wednesday, they were all going a little stir crazy.

When Emily received a text message late Wednesday night, she was ready for a case, but instead of being work-related, the text message was from Hannah asking if she was still up. It was after eleven. Emily replied simply that she was and waited to see what her daughter wanted.

"How early do you get up in the morning?"

Emily frowned at the new text message as she read it. Instead of typing a response, she picked up her phone and called Hannah, deciding that actually talking to the girl would be the best way to get to the bottom of what she wanted.

"Why the sudden interest in my sleeping habits?" Emily asked the girl when she answered the phone.

"Oh, um, my dad said it was too late to call," Hannah said.

"You can call me any time," Emily told her.

"I have a French paper that's due tomorrow," Hannah started apprehensively, knowing she should have mentioned the paper when Emily was helping her study for her final. "I have to get an A on it to get an A in the class. Do you think you could check the grammar tomorrow morning if I send it to you tonight?" The teenager blurted out her request very quickly.

"You have a paper that's due tomorrow?" Emily said in a surprised tone. "Why am I just hearing about this now?" She asked her kid. She helped Hannah prepare for her French final just that weekend, and the paper never came up.

"Because I'm writing it now?" Hannah mumbled her response, somehow making it sound more like a question.

"It's not even written yet?" Emily questioned in disbelief.

"I'm almost done," Hannah said defensively.

"How much do you have left?" Emily wondered.

"Like half," Hannah admitted reluctantly.

"Half?" Emily repeated incredulously. There was nothing like waiting until the last minute.

"Will you help me or not?" Hannah asked in a small voice. "I can send you what I have now," she offered meekly, knowing her birth mother wasn't very impressed with her at the moment. She had known the woman wouldn't be. She'd had to work up the courage to text Emily. "And you can look at the rest in the morning," Hannah finished hopefully.

Emily shook her head as her daughter spoke. She was already putting jeans and a sweater on. She'd been wearing the long sleeve Atlantic City shirt and sweatpants that she slept in and watching TV in bed as she tried to wind down from the day. "Ask your dad if it's too late for me to come over and help you tonight." She had no intention of doing her daughter's homework for her, but it would go faster if she were there to help. She knew Hannah wouldn't be getting any sleep until the paper was written.

"You don't have to come," Hannah said quickly. Her dad had specifically told her not to call Emily that late, and she knew he would be mad if he thought she asked the woman to come over.

"Let me talk to her." Emily heard Steve demand impatiently. She heard shuffling and wasn't surprised when seconds later his voice came over the phone instead of Hannah's. "I'm sorry about this," the adoptive father apologized for their daughter. "You don't have to come over here at midnight," he said in an embarrassed tone, his exasperation with the fourteen year old coming through loud and clear. "I told her it was too late to bother you."

"No, it's okay," Emily assured him. He was right that it was too late for the teenager to be calling anyone else, but Emily was Hannah's mother. The rules were different. Her daughter could call her any time. Etiquette went out the window. "Really," Emily insisted. "She's not going to get any sleep until her paper's finished, and it'll go faster if I help her," she tried to convince Steve. "Let me help her."

"If you're _sure_ it's okay," Steve conceded reluctantly.

"I'm positive," Emily said.

* * *

Steve answered the door with a sheepish expression, clearly still embarrassed that Hannah had asked Emily for help at that time of night. He was wearing a Duke t-shirt and grey sweatpants. He apologized again and led Emily back to the kitchen where Hannah was sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop open in front of her and notebooks and textbooks spread out on the table.

The teenage girl was wearing an oversize Stowe sweatshirt and black leggings. Her hair was pulled off her face in a messy bun and she wasn't wearing any makeup. The dark circles under her eyes stood out in contrast to her pale face. It was clear just from looking at her that this wasn't her first or only late night that week.

"Emily," Hannah said tiredly, removing her earbuds. "Thanks for coming." She offered the woman a small smile.

Emily nodded and then proceeded to move one of the chairs around to the same side of the table her daughter was sitting on. She sat down next to the girl and looked over her shoulder. "Show me what you have so far."

Hannah gave her birth mother a brief explanation of the assignment and then let the woman read the unfinished paper. The first page was good, but the rest was riddled with grammatical errors. It was obvious that the teenager was completely exhausted, and the quality of her work was suffering for it. The paper Emily read weeks ago didn't have half as many errors in it, but then again Hannah hadn't been operating on no sleep when she wrote that paper. Emily was frowning as she finished the last page of Hannah's final paper.

"Is it that bad?" Hannah asked wearily as she popped the tab open on a can of Coke.

"Really?" Emily questioned with a disapproving glance at the soda can. "You're having caffeine now?"

"Yeah," Hannah said with a shrug.

"Aren't you tired?" Emily asked her kid.

"That's kind of the point of caffeine," Hannah replied.

"Yes, it is," was all Emily said in response. She knew Hannah would have a hard time going to sleep later if she drank a Coke now, but she wasn't going to argue with the teenager about it, especially not when Steve was just in the other room and wasn't going to say anything if his radio silence was any indication.

"Is it that bad?" Hannah asked again with a hint of impatience in her voice. Her birth mother's facial expression when she was reading her paper wasn't very promising. The fourteen year old felt like she was never going to finish the paper at this rate. She was so tired and just wanted this whole week to be over.

"There are a lot of grammar errors," Emily said honestly.

The young teenager let out a long-suffering sigh. "I'm gonna fail," she said dramatically with unshed tears of frustration in her eyes.

"You're not going to fail," Emily told her kid with an exasperated look on her face. "But if you're so worried about your grade, why did you wait until the last minute?"

As tired as she was, the teenager took the simple question as a personal affront. It didn't help that her dad had already lectured her for waiting until the last minute to start studying for her finals. Now, she had another parent – a parent the fourteen year old didn't really see as an authority figure yet – starting in on her, too. She didn't need this, not from Emily. "Did you just come over here to lecture me?" Hannah muttered sullenly with her arms crossed in front of her chest. "Because if you did, you can leave now."

Emily stared at her daughter in shock. She couldn't believe the kid she raced over there to help had really just said that to her. "No," she said slowly, trying really hard to remain patient with the teenager. "I came over to help you," she reminded the girl. "It's almost midnight, and I came over to help you with your paper – a paper I would have helped you with last weekend had I known about it," she added pointedly with a reproachful look. "But you waited until tonight to ask me for help. Now do you want my help or not?" She asked her kid seriously, poker face intact.

Hannah's eyes widened. No matter how badly she acted, neither of her adoptive parents would ever have refused to help her. But Emily could leave right that second – and the woman had a good enough poker face that the young teenager believed she would. If Emily left, she really would fail. "Yes," Hannah answered her birth mother with big, round eyes and a pleading expression. She needed the woman's help. "Please," the teenager added softly.

"That's what I thought," Emily told her child. "And I'm happy to help you," she reiterated to the girl, "but not if you're going to talk to me like that."

Hannah lowered her gaze and hung her head a little. "I'm sorry," she offered sheepishly. "I'm just really tired and stressed out right now."

"I know you are," Emily acknowledged. "And you have no one to blame for that but yourself."

"I know," Hannah said wearily. "I'm sorry."

Emily studied the contrite young teenager for a few seconds as she decided how much she could 'help' without actually doing it for her. In that moment, the mother just wanted the paper finished so her kid could get some sleep. "I'm going to fix the grammar errors," Emily said. "While I do that, you need to finish your paper."

"How can I do that if you're on my computer?" Hannah asked.

Emily took in her kid's perplexed frown and decided she wasn't being a smartass, at least not this time. "There's this great new invention called a pen," Emily said.

Hannah gaped at her birth mother, but the woman's serious stare prompted her to pick up a pen and start writing even though she knew she'd just have to type it up later.

Once her daughter was writing furiously, Emily directed her attention back to the open Word document on the girl's laptop. Hannah didn't need to know her plan yet, but as long as the girl cooperated with her, Emily was going to type the rest of the paper for her, fixing any errors in the process. It would just be faster that way.

From where he was sitting in the living room, Steve had heard everything that was being said in the kitchen. At one point, he was ready to get up and go in there to say something to Hannah, but he didn't need to. Emily seemed to have it under control. He was actually impressed with the way she handled the tired, moody teenager.

Half an hour later Emily was carefully typing Hannah's handwritten words while the girl got ready for bed. Steve waited for his daughter to disappear up the stairs and then approached Emily.

"Thank you," he said sincerely. "You really did _not_ have to do this."

Emily's fingers stilled on the keyboard and she glanced up at him warily. "I wanted to."

"I can't imagine why with how she's been acting," Steve said, shaking his head. He didn't want Hannah's biological mother to think he was okay with how she was acting. He wasn't.

"What, like a teenager?" Emily said wryly as she went back to the task as hand, typing furiously.

Steve scoffed slightly. "More like a cranky toddler if you ask me."

Emily chuckled softly. "Was she more difficult as a toddler or now?"

"Now," he replied. "Definitely now. Are you kidding? I didn't have to worry about boys when she was a toddler," he tried to joke. "But in all seriousness, she was a happy baby. She was a little daredevil as a kid though. She climbed everything, and I do mean _everything_. The worst was when she was five or six and climbed up onto the roof of her treehouse to jump off into the snow. It had to be at least ten feet off the ground."

"Was she okay?" Emily asked with wide eyes.

"She was perfectly fine," Steve told her. "Meanwhile I thought I was going to have a heart attack."

Thanks to Penelope, Emily had seen pictures of her daughter growing up, but that was different from hearing the stories about Hannah growing up. She hung onto every word Steve said.

"Sarah always said it was amazing Hannah never cracked her head open with all the stunts she pulled," Steve continued. "The only time she ever really got hurt is when she was seven. She fell off the top of the metal bar at the top of the swing set at school during recess and broke her arm."

By the time Hannah came back downstairs with her face washed, teeth brushed and pajamas on, her French paper was finished and Emily was laughing at a story about Hannah wanting to wear her adoptive mom's high heels to Six Flags so they would think she was tall enough to ride a roller coaster she didn't quite meet the minimum height requirement for.

"_Dad_," Hannah whined as she caught the tail end of the story. "Why are you telling her that?" Without waiting for an answer, the embarrassed teenager turned to her birth mother. "I was, like, seven," Hannah said in her defense. She looked back at her dad accusingly. "What else did you tell her?"

"Nothing," Steve lied. "Did you thank Emily for helping you?" He asked, trying to distract his daughter. She didn't look like she believed him, and he knew she wouldn't let it go.

The girl turned to Emily. "Thank you," she said dutifully.

"You're welcome. I'll see you on Saturday?" Emily confirmed their plans. Saturday was supposed to be her day off although it didn't always work out that way. Lately it was turning into her day with her daughter.

"As long as there's no French," Hannah said seriously. After her final was over, she didn't even want to look at another French word until after Christmas break and maybe not even then.

**A/N:** Thank you for reading and, of course, to everyone who reviewed the last chapter! I didn't plan it this way, but Hannah's finals week ended up being actual finals week for a lot of people. I know writing a paper isn't high excitement, but I wanted to show how Emily responded to Hannah acting like that when she was tired and stressed out. The next few chapters will be holiday-related, and my goal is to try to get them posted by New Year's, but no promises since, like Hannah's French paper, they're not done yet (but they are planned out and I have a little bit written). Hannah may make an appearance at the BAU Christmas party so please let me know if there's anyone on the team you want to see her spend time with. Other ideas or suggestions are more than welcome as well. Thanks again for reading.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 16**

It was Friday December 21st and the BAU team was restless from not having a case all week. At 3:00 pm Emily finally told everyone they could go home early.

To Penelope's surprise, when Emily heard her and JJ making plans to go to the mall for some last-minute Christmas shopping, she asked if she could join. This was surprising for two reasons. One, Emily and Tara were both of the opinion that overcrowded malls were to be avoided in the weeks leading up to Christmas. And, two, Emily was always prepared and didn't seem the type to leave Christmas shopping until the last-minute.

As they roamed the busy mall, Emily was drawn to clothing stores that appealed to young teenage girls, not the high-end boutiques she usually shopped at.

"Oh! Are we shopping for your mini me?" Penelope asked.

"Yeah," Emily admitted with a sigh. "I don't know what to get her."

"I want to buy her all the things," Penelope said with a dangerous gleam in her eyes as she scanned the dress section of Anthropologie like a woman on a mission.

Emily watched a little warily as the bubbly blonde tech analyst wasted no time pulling three dresses that the mother wasn't sure she could picture Hannah wearing. Unsurprisingly Penelope was choosing bright multi-colored dresses. And did that dress have _ruffles_? Yes. Yes, it did.

Emily had yet to see her daughter wear a dress. The girl seemed to prefer skinny jeans and sweaters, but that could be partly due to the winter weather. Hannah was wearing a purple sweater the night Emily met her, but every other time Emily had seen her, the young teenager had been wearing more neutral colors like black or grey. Like most teenage girls, Hannah wanted to fit in, not stand out.

"She's a teenage girl, not a Barbie for you to dress up," Emily said with a laugh, trying to gently discourage Penelope with her light teasing tone. She didn't want to hurt the other woman's feelings.

Penelope waved her hand dismissively. "I see no difference. Teenage girl or not, she's still a doll face."

Emily looked to JJ for help, but the blonde profiler just looked on in amusement. Penelope always went a little crazy buying for Henry and Michael, too, and there was really nothing JJ could do to stop her – she'd been trying unsuccessfully for years. It was Emily's turn now.

It wasn't even just the clothes Penelope was choosing – and Emily's doubt that her teenager would actually wear any of them. As much as she wanted to make up for all the Christmases she'd missed, Emily didn't want her daughter to think she was trying to buy her affection. She knew that wouldn't work. It had never worked when her own mother bought her lavish gifts to try to make up for what she missed. Emily recognized the bribes for what they were and only resented her mother more for it. An American Girl doll didn't change the fact that her nanny took Emily to her first day of kindergarten instead of her mother. An ornate jewelry box didn't make up for the school play her parents never saw Emily play the lead in. A shiny new sports car didn't make the angry, jaded teenager Emily had become feel any less bitter when her parents missed the high school awards ceremony where she was honored for her academic achievements.

Emily was not going to repeat her mother's mistakes. That wasn't what Penelope was doing. Penelope had nothing to make up for, and Emily knew the woman's intentions were pure and good, but a friend of Emily's buying Hannah a whole new wardrobe was just…too much. It was too much too soon. Emily was spending time with Hannah regularly, but the relationship was still so new and tentative. The girl didn't even know Emily's BAU family and might not see her biological mother's co-workers as instant family.

"Look, I love that you want to spoil my kid just because she's my kid," Emily started. She didn't have any siblings to be aunts or uncles to her only child. Her mother might have spoiled a grandchild under different circumstances, but Emily couldn't imagine Elizabeth Prentiss embracing a child who had a criminal for a father. Hannah would be illegitimate in the conservative, traditional woman's eyes. The only people who would love Hannah for no other reason than because she was Emily's were her BAU family. They already cared about Hannah, and, with the exception of Reid, none of them had even met the teenager yet. Hell, Penelope wasn't treating Hannah any differently than Henry, and Henry was her godson. The tech analyst was an equal opportunity spoiler of any and all BAU kids. "I really do," Emily continued sincerely. "And I know she's going to love you. How could she not?"

Penelope, arms laden with clothes, glanced up from the clothing rack she was perusing. "Why do I sense a big hairy butt coming?"

"It's not a 'but.' It's an 'and.' I love that you want to spoil my kid just because she's my kid," Emily repeated. "_And_ I'll let you do that _after_ you actually meet her and get to know her. Just not this Christmas, okay?" Emily looked at Penelope with a pleading expression.

The next time it would make sense to buy gifts for Hannah would be the girl's fifteenth birthday, and that was over six months away. By then Emily was sure she would have an opportunity to introduce Hannah to the team. It would be different when Hannah actually knew who Penelope was and saw how sweet and generous the woman was. Right now it would just be one of Emily's friends - a friend Hannah had yet to meet - going way overboard. Emily wasn't sure her kid or her kid's adoptive father would be comfortable with that.

"But she's the only girl, and girls are more fun to shop for than boys," Penelope said, pouting. She cast an apologetic look at JJ. "Sorry, Jayje. You know I love Henry and Michael, but boy clothes are nowhere near as cute."

"I'm sorry, but a whole new wardrobe from a friend of mine that she doesn't know is a bit much. You can buy out Anthropologie for her birthday in July," Emily promised. "In the meantime, you guys can help me find something for her. I need the help."

Penelope gave in despondently, but only after extracting another promise from Emily – Emily had to promise that she would be the very next person to meet Hannah. The bubbly blonde was _not_ happy that Reid met Hannah before she did and made sure Emily knew that.

They left Anthropologie empty-handed. Emily saw a few sweaters she thought Hannah might like but still wasn't sure if that was what she wanted to get her daughter. As a general rule, teenage girls liked clothes, but they didn't always like clothes their mothers picked out for them.

Emily knew she was probably overthinking it, but she really wanted to get the perfect gift. It seemed important somehow that the first gift she ever bought for her daughter be something the girl would really like.

Over two hours later they'd been in every clothing store that catered to teenage girls and Sephora, and Emily still had nothing. They were all tired when they got a table at one of the chain restaurants in the mall and ordered glasses of wine.

"Okay, how is it possible that none of us have any brilliant ideas?" Penelope wondered.

Two profilers and Penelope Garcia with all her tech genius should be able to find the perfect gift for…well, anyone, but in this case Emily's fourteen year old daughter.

"We were all teenage girls once, but it's been a while," Emily said.

"Are you calling us old?" JJ asked with a good-natured grin.

"We're only as old as we feel, and, I, for one, feel young and fabulous," Penelope announced with her usual dramatic flair.

"What does she like?" JJ questioned, wanting to be more helpful than she was in this situation. She was used to buying for boys.

"I don't know," Emily murmured uncertainly. "She likes to read. Historical fiction mainly, particularly anything about the Holocaust, but I don't know what books she's already read. She has questionable taste in music. Her coffee addiction rivals my own before I gave up caffeine. She plays volleyball. As for any other hobbies, I'm not really sure."

"That's not a lot to go on," JJ said honestly.

Emily groaned. "I know. I've only hung out with her a handful of times."

"Oh, I know!" Penelope exclaimed suddenly. "An e-reader!"

"That's a great idea," Emily said. She'd been in Hannah's room and sat at Hannah's desk and didn't remember seeing any tablets. Considering how messy the girl's room was, somehow the profiler didn't think that was because it was put away. It was more likely the teenager didn't have one. The more Emily thought about it, the more she liked the idea. An e-reader cost more than a friend, even a family friend, would be likely to spend on a teenager – and Emily was more than that or at least she desperately wanted to be. But it also wasn't so extravagant that it would make Hannah – or Steve – too uncomfortable. It was a nice but reasonable gift. "I don't know why I didn't think of it myself," Emily muttered more to herself than anyone else.

"Uh, because all things tech are my realm as the resident tech goddess. Duh," Penelope replied, earning a laugh from Emily and a smile from JJ. The tech analyst was already online shopping from her cell phone. She handed her phone to Emily to show her the e-reader she would personally recommend.

* * *

An opportunity for Emily to make good on her promise and introduce Hannah to Penelope came up a lot sooner than the profiler thought it would – the very next day in fact.

After their mother-daughter brunch on Saturday morning, Emily asked if Hannah wanted to go back to her condo for their long overdue Scrabble rematch. Brunch was good – no, great actually. After two days of sleeping until noon, the tired, stressed out teenager Emily was dealing with just a few days ago was now well-rested and happy. She'd gotten all A's for her late-night efforts and, even at her age, was starting to get excited for the rapidly approaching holiday now that finals were out of the way. Emily was really enjoying spending time with this version of her kid and wanted more time with her. It was the most relaxed and happiest she'd ever seen the girl.

The profiler also had an ulterior motive for suggesting they go back to her condo – she'd forgotten to grab her daughter's Christmas present when she rushed out the door to pick her up for brunch. The wrapped Amazon Kindle was sitting on the kitchen table. It wasn't like Emily to forget something like that, but Andrew spent the night and she'd been running behind that morning. In her hurry to get out the door, she'd completely forgotten to grab the gift.

Hannah glanced at the time on her iPhone before responding. It was already after 2:00 pm. "I can't," Hannah said regretfully. She, too, was enjoying her time with Emily. The woman was fun to hang out with when there was no French on the agenda.

"Oh," Emily said, trying to hide her dismay. "You have big plans tonight? A hot date?" The mother asked teasingly.

Hannah rolled her eyes. "No," she said. "It's my friend's birthday. She got a limo, and a group of us are going to look at Christmas lights," the teenager explained excitedly. "I'm supposed to wear an ugly Christmas sweater, and I don't have one so I need to find one."

Although she wasn't looking forward to braving the crowds for the second day in a row, Emily offered to take her teenager shopping – an offer Hannah accepted eagerly. Emily would do just about anything for more time with her daughter – even go to Target the Saturday before Christmas.

It took Emily over fifteen minutes just to find a parking spot. The store was even more crowded than she expected, and the Christmas sweater section reflected that – it was very picked over. The whole experience took way longer than it should have, and they had nothing to show for it.

They tried Walmart with the same result. That was when Emily had an idea.

Penelope always went all out to show her Christmas spirit. Last year the woman showed up to the BAU Christmas party wearing a Santa hat, the tackiest Christmas sweater Emily had ever seen, and red-and-white striped candy cane leggings. Emily was guessing her quirky friend had several more sweaters just like the one she'd worn that night in her closet. Anything Penelope had would be a little big on Hannah, but the slender teenager wore oversized sweaters over skinny jeans all the time so Emily thought she could make a larger size work. Hannah didn't really have much choice. It was now almost 4:00 pm, and they were getting desperate.

Emily sent Penelope a text message explaining the situation and, just as she expected, received an immediate response that of course Hannah could borrow a Christmas sweater.

Emily tried to do Penelope justice as she described the bubbly blonde to Hannah on the way to Penelope's apartment. She started with a description of the outfit the tech analyst wore to the BAU Christmas party the year before. Then the Unit Chief listed off some of the more creative nicknames Penelope had come up with for Emily herself as well as the rest of the team in an attempt to prepare the unsuspecting girl for the big personality that was Penelope Garcia - and all of her quirks. Some of the nicknames had the girl giggling from the passenger seat of Emily's sedan. The fourteen year old thought it was pretty funny that anyone would call a badass FBI agent 'gumdrop.'

"Does that mean I can call you gumdrop?" Hannah asked her birth mother with a big grin.

"Only if you want me to come up with a nickname for you," Emily responded without missing a beat. "Hannah Banana?" She tried, going with the obvious nickname to start with. She smirked slightly at the face her child made.

"No one's called me that since I was really little," Hannah told her birth mother, her disdain for the childish nickname clear.

"No? How about Hanny Bear?" Emily suggested, substituting 'Hanny' for 'honey.' Messing with her kid was fun. It was too easy to completely embarrass her increasingly red-faced teenager.

"Stop," Hannah said with wide eyes, the single syllable drawn out in a long whine. "You win. No nicknames. Just never call me that again. Ever."

Emily merely laughed at her kid's serious expression.

"Does Penelope have any nicknames?" Hannah asked in an attempt to get Emily's mind off coming up with horribly embarrassing nicknames for her.

The profiler didn't think Derek Morgan's nicknames for the tech analyst were appropriate for her impressionable young teenager's ears and decided not to even mention them. "Not a very creative one," Emily replied. "Sometimes I call her PG."

Hannah furrowed her eyebrows at the nickname. "Like parental guidance?"

"It's her initials," Emily explained.

Emily went on to describe the tech analyst's 'lair' and some of the woman's favorite toys and gadgets. She mentioned Penelope's shopping addiction, even going so far as to tell her daughter about the time the tech analyst 'did a thing' and bought iPads for the entire team – without budget approval _or_ Hotch's approval. Hannah had an impressed yet disbelieving look on her face.

"So she was a hacker?" Hannah asked in an awed tone.

"Key word there is _was_," Emily told her kid pointedly. She didn't want Hannah thinking hacking was cool. "She got caught, and she had a choice between doing time and working for the FBI."

"Now she works with you," Hannah said. She cast a nervous glance at her birth mother. "Does that mean she knows that I, um…about the night that I-" Hannah took a deep breath and blurted out her question. "What I'm trying to ask is did she help you find me the night I was, uh, in Bethesda?"

They both knew the girl was referring to the night she found out she was adopted and ran out on her dad. The young teenager didn't want everyone her birth mother worked with knowing about her complete freak out. What would they think of her?

Emily noticed Hannah toying with the gold heart-shaped pendant on the necklace she always wore – a telltale sign the girl was nervous or uncomfortable. "Yes, she did," Emily said honestly. "And she's been dying to meet you ever since."

"Really?" Hannah perked up a little but still gave her birth mother a questioning look. "Why?"

"Because you're my daughter," Emily answered simply. "And she's one of my best friends. As one of my best friends, she already sees you as a sort of niece."

"Oh," Hannah said.

"Come on," Emily said encouragingly. "Let's go raid her closet. It'll be way better than Target or Walmart. And a lot less crowded."

Emily led the way up to Penelope's apartment, pausing as they reached the woman's floor. "She's a hugger," she tried to warn her daughter. Her kid wasn't shy by any means, but it had taken her a little while to warm up to Emily. The profiler knew the girl might have been more guarded with her than she would be with anyone else just because of who Emily was to her – the birth mother who didn't keep her. If Hannah felt for even one second like she wasn't wanted, it was bound to affect her behavior, making her more reserved in her interactions with Emily.

"Okay," Hannah acknowledged the warning with a little laugh. She grew up in a family of huggers so she was used to being hugged. It didn't really bother her, even when it was extended family members in Chicago that she only saw once a year or her grandmother there who always smelled strongly of baby powder.

The only reason Hannah wasn't more physically affectionate with Emily was because she had gone into the newfound relationship with her birth mother determined not to let the woman replace her mom. That meant keeping a safe distance from the older woman. She could only allow herself to get so close to Emily without feeling disloyal to her adoptive mom.

There had been times in their short, fledgling relationship when it was easy for Hannah to see her birth mother as more of a friend than a mother - going to brunch, grabbing coffee, and shopping were all things she did with her friends. But there were other times when Emily acted like such a mom, nagging her about not waiting until the last minute to study or write her paper for example. And the one time she took the Metro home after their unplanned coffee and Scrabble date, Emily insisted that she text her to let her know when she got home. Only a mother would think their teenager was dead in a ditch somewhere if the teenager in question didn't call or text after arriving somewhere, even their own home apparently.

Try as she might, Hannah couldn't seem to force Emily into a 'friend' box in her mind and leave her there. Her birth mother didn't really fit in that box, and Hannah knew it even if she wasn't ready to acknowledge the woman for what she really was which was a third parent.

Just as Emily predicted, Penelope didn't waste any time engulfing her new niece in a hug.

"You're here!" Penelope cried excitedly when she opened the door. "You must be Hannah. I'm Penelope."

"It's nice to meet you," Hannah said politely.

That was the extent of the introductions and the point where Penelope gave the fourteen year old a big hug.

"Let her go, PG," the profiler prompted gently after a moment. "She can't breathe," she added, only half-joking.

"Right," Penelope said as she released the teenager from the hug and instead linked arms with her. "Okay, I have Christmas sweaters galore. I have a glittery sweater, a sweater with sequins and bells, and a sweater that lights up," Penelope told the girl as she brought her back to the bedroom where she had every Christmas sweater she owned laid out on her bed for Hannah to choose from. "Take your pick, sweetie."

Emily followed them and watched as her teenager went straight to a Christmas tree sweater with lights on the tree that actually lit up. The only problem was it said 'Get Lit' on it. Emily couldn't be sure whether Hannah just liked the lights or if she liked the double entendre referencing drinking – a popular pastime of rebellious teenagers everywhere. Either way, the profiler didn't think Steve would be too happy with her if she brought their fourteen year old home with that sweater.

"No," Emily said quickly. It was the first time she'd really said no to her teenage daughter. Emily tried to sound firm enough that the girl would realize there was no point in arguing. She really didn't want to argue with her daughter in front of her friend.

Hannah glanced over her shoulder at Emily in surprise and then turned to Penelope, half-expecting the other woman to take her side in this. "She said I could pick," the fourteen year old protested Emily's unilateral decision. It was Penelope's sweater, and Penelope _had_ said she could take her pick.

Penelope gave the young teenager an apologetic look but deferred to Emily. "I'm sorry, but your mom's the boss, and, by that I mean in addition to being the boss of you, she's literally my boss lady."

"Pick another sweater," Emily instructed her daughter.

The teenager wanted to object loudly to the idea that Emily was the boss of her but decided to keep her mouth shut and pick another sweater since it was two against one – a wise decision. She wasn't going to win this one.

Hannah held a Gingerbread man sweater that said 'Oh Snap' on it up in front of her. "Can I wear this tonight or are the fashion police going to outlaw it, too?" She said in a snarky tone that reminded Penelope so much of Emily. Penelope covered her mouth with her hand to hide a smile and looked at Emily for her reaction.

"I like that one," Emily told her daughter mildly, choosing to ignore the tone. It was becoming more common for the mother-daughter pair to banter the more comfortable they got with each other, and Emily didn't really think Hannah was actually trying to be rude or disrespectful. Even if she was, Emily wasn't going to reprimand her child when they had an audience, not for something like that.

Hannah's entire demeanor changed as she thanked Penelope profusely, promising to wash the sweater and give it to Emily to return. Just like that, she was back to being perfectly polite. She wasn't usually rude. Snarky and sarcastic, but not downright rude.

After seeing how tolerant Hannah was of Penelope hugging her and hanging on her all the way to the bedroom, Emily slung her arm around her daughter's shoulders casually as they left Penelope's apartment. Hannah was so focused on her phone (she was Snapchatting her friends a picture of the Gingerbread man sweater) that she kept her eyes glued to the screen and allowed her birth mother to steer her out of the apartment building.

"She was really nice," Hannah said once they were in Emily's car.

"She's one of the nicest people I know," Emily told her.

Hannah turned her attention back to her phone when she received a notification. Her friends were responding to her Snapchat with pictures of their own ugly Christmas sweaters. She was busy on her phone the whole ten-minute drive to her house. She didn't even realize they were there until Emily said something.

"Have fun tonight," Emily said. "Not too much fun though. Don't get lit," the mother added teasingly.

"I won't," Hannah said with a roll of her eyes. "It was just a sweater, not a plan."

**A/N:** Thank you for reading and to anyone who reviewed last chapter. Next chapter will be the BAU Christmas party with Hannah as a surprise guest and maybe a little bit of Christmas day. I'm still going to try to finish it this week because I like the idea of posting the holiday chapters over the actual holidays, but in case I don't, happy New Year.

**Functionderivatives: **First of all, thank you so much for always reviewing. In answer to your question, there isn't anyone I've seen who looks exactly how I envision Hannah, but the actress who is the closest is probably **Ruby Jay**. If you go to her IMDB page, the picture of her that looks the most like the Hannah in my head is not her main picture but the first picture under her photos (photo 1 of 31). In it, her hair is wavy and she's wearing a white tank top. Her coloring and facial features are pretty close to what I imagine, but she's short and I've described Hannah as being taller like Emily. If you (or anyone else reading this) can think of anyone better, please let me know :) The best description of Hannah's physical appearance was in Chapter 5.


	18. Chapter 18

**A/N:** Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter. This is a really long one. I thought about breaking it into two chapters but didn't want to drag Christmas Eve out.

**Chapter 17**

Emily didn't know that Steve would appreciate her stopping by on Christmas Eve – a time he and Hannah were probably planning to spend with his family. She just wanted to drop off Hannah's gift since she wouldn't see her daughter on Christmas and had forgotten to bring it the other day. She tried to time her visit early enough that it wouldn't intrude on any dinner plans or plans to attend Christmas Eve mass.

Steve answered the door wearing a charcoal grey suit. "Emily," he said in a surprised tone, his expression somewhat guarded. "I didn't know you were coming over." He didn't come right out and say it, but he thought an unexpected visit from his child's birth mother on Christmas Eve was a little inappropriate. He liked Emily, but there were still boundaries – or there should be.

"I know. I'm sorry to just drop by like this," Emily said apologetically, wary of Steve's reaction. It definitely looked like he and Hannah had plans – why else would Steve be all dressed up? She held up the wrapped gift. "I just wanted to drop this off for Hannah, and then I'll get out of your hair," she assured him.

He nodded and stepped back to let her in. "Come in. Hannah's in the family room watching TV."

Unlike her dad, Hannah did _not_ look like she was ready to go anywhere. She was stretched out lazily on the couch. Her hair was pulled off her makeup-free face in a haphazard braid. A crème colored fleece throw blanket covered the girl so Emily couldn't see what she was wearing, but she looked pretty comfortable on the couch. Her undivided attention was on the television screen as she absentmindedly scratched the dog's ears – he was sitting on the floor by her head. Emily instantly recognized the movie on TV as _Elf_.

"Hey," Steve said, trying to get Hannah's attention. "Look who's here."

It took the teenager a few seconds to tear her attention away from the TV and look at the two adults standing at the threshold of the family room. "Emily," Hannah said in the same surprised tone her dad had used a moment ago. She sat up on the couch, the throw blanket falling off of her as she did. Emily noted the long-sleeve shirt Hannah was wearing. It was awfully casual compared to Steve's suit. "What are you doing here?" Hannah questioned curiously but not unhappily.

Emily thought it was strange that Steve looked like he was on his way out, and Hannah looked like she didn't plan on moving from her spot on the couch all night. "I won't stay long," Emily said cautiously with a quick glance at Steve, not really sure what to make of the situation. "I know it's Christmas Eve, and you guys probably have plans." She paused her fishing expedition there to see if either of them would take the bait.

"I don't," Hannah said earnestly.

"I have a work Christmas party," Steve offered, feeling like he had no choice but to explain now that Hannah had said that. He already felt bad enough about leaving his kid alone on Christmas Eve without his kid's birth mother being there to judge him for it. He wasn't even looking forward to the party, but he had to make an appearance – his clients would be there. He planned to duck out early and try to watch one last Christmas movie with his daughter before she went to bed.

Emily didn't like the idea of her child being alone on Christmas Eve, but she, of all people, understood work obligations. "My team's having a Christmas party tonight, too," Emily told them. She looked down at the emerald green cowl neck sweater and dark wash skinny jeans she was wearing. "But ours is clearly more casual." She offered Steve a smile to try to ease the awkwardness she and Steve were both feeling in that moment. She shifted her gaze back to her daughter. "You didn't want to go to your dad's party?"

"I wasn't invited," Hannah told her.

"Kids aren't invited," Steve was quick to clarify. "Not just you," he added pointedly, staring at his daughter. "And let's be honest," he told the girl. "You don't want to go any more than I do. What was it you said again?"

"I'd rather have a cavity filled than spend the night in a room full of mind-numbingly dull lawyers debating financial regulations," Hannah repeated what she'd said to him earlier in a dry tone.

Emily chuckled softly and looked to Steve to gauge his reaction. "I would be offended, but she's right," he told Emily with a good-natured smile.

"See? You're a lawyer, and even you admit it," Hannah said triumphantly.

"Oh, yeah? How do you feel about a room full of FBI agents?" Emily asked her kid. She was hinting at Hannah going to the BAU party with her without actually coming right out and asking.

Hannah didn't think gun-wielding FBI agents could possibly be boring and told Emily so.

Getting the kid she had no parental rights to for Christmas Eve was more than Emily would ever have expected, but she didn't know if her kid's adoptive father would like the idea of Hannah spending any part of the holidays with her. He hadn't exactly given Emily the warmest reception.

Holidays were a time to spend with family, and, while he had allowed Emily to spend time with Hannah, Steve had also made it very clear that _he_ was Hannah's parent and Emily being there now didn't change that. Even if he had other plans that night that didn't include Hannah, that didn't necessarily mean Steve was okay with Emily stealing her away on Christmas Eve. And that was what he was really afraid of on some level – Emily taking his kid away from him. Any adoptive parent would be afraid of that if a birth parent suddenly came back into their child's life. Logically Steve knew Hannah was his legally, but biologically she was Emily's.

Emily cast a questioning glance at Steve, but he either didn't pick up on her not-so-subtle hints or was deliberately ignoring them. She wasn't sure which. The profiler bit her bottom lip as she debated the wisdom of pushing the issue. It would be better if she could talk to Steve alone. Asking directly in front of Hannah would put Steve in the position of being the bad guy and saying no if he was really opposed to the idea. She really didn't want to put herself at odds with him when he had the ability to deny her access to her daughter.

Deciding to wait and see if she could get a few minutes alone with Steve to ask, Emily moved on to the reason she was there in the first place. She walked over to the couch to give Hannah the wrapped package she'd been holding. "Merry Christmas."

"Thank you," Hannah said as she accepted the wrapped package. After Emily asked what she wanted for Christmas, Hannah kind of thought the woman might get her something but wasn't sure. Just in case she did, Hannah got a small gift for her birth mother. It was up in her bedroom. The teenager set the wrapped package down carefully on the coffee table and jumped up. "I have something for you, too," she explained before disappearing up the stairs.

Seizing the opportunity, Emily immediately turned to Steve. "I didn't want to ask her without talking to you first," Emily started carefully, "but I can take her to my team's Christmas party. That way she won't be alone tonight."

Dropping hints didn't work for the vast majority of males, and, as smart as he was, Steve was no exception. Emily caught him off guard with that.

Thinking like a lawyer, he didn't want to set the precedent that his daughter's birth mother got to spend any holidays with her. It was one thing for Emily to spend time with Hannah occasionally, but holidays were sacred. And that wasn't the only thing that was bothering him.

Up until that point, Steve had only really thought about Emily spending time with Hannah one-on-one, getting to know her and answering any questions she had. The prospect of his child attending her birth mother's work Christmas party and being introduced to a bunch of people as Emily's daughter was daunting to him. Hannah was his daughter. His instinct was to stake a proprietary claim on her.

"I don't know," he said hesitantly. "It's Christmas Eve," he pointed out unnecessarily.

"And I never would have suggested it if you already had plans with her," Emily said, feeling it prudent to point that out. It was also a tactful way of reminding him that he _didn't_ have plans with his daughter. Hannah would be sitting at home alone on Christmas Eve.

Steve glanced at the staircase warily, knowing his daughter could come bounding down the stairs at any minute. As much as he may have wanted to, he couldn't spend Christmas Eve with her and Emily could. He knew Hannah would be in good hands with her, but sharing his daughter was a new concept for him and he was still learning how to do it. It was a steep learning curve. For thirteen years, Hannah had been his, with no thought of the birth mother who gave her up for adoption ever having any kind of relationship with her – it was a closed adoption. Emily – or 'Grace' at the time – wanted it that way. Her reasons for that made sense now that he knew she'd been undercover and was afraid for the baby's safety. That actually earned his respect – she did the right thing for Hannah. He knew it couldn't have been easy for her, but she did it anyway.

They heard a telltale creak on the stairs, and Steve knew time was running out to make a decision. "You can ask her," he agreed very reluctantly.

"Are you sure?" Emily questioned. It didn't take a profiler to read his conflicted expression. Anyone could see that he didn't want Hannah to go to the BAU Christmas party. The real question was if Emily was going to let that stop her.

Before Steve could respond, Hannah rejoined them. Completely unaware of what she was interrupting, the girl thrust a reindeer gift bag with red tissue paper sticking out of it into Emily's hands. "This is for you."

Emily held Steve's gaze for a moment before joining her daughter on the couch, watching as Hannah tore into the shiny red, white and green striped wrapping paper with the reckless abandon of a child. Hannah hadn't really known what to expect from her birth mother, but she wasn't expecting expensive electronics. She gasped slightly in surprise when she saw the box. She turned so she was facing Emily on the couch. "Thank you so much," Hannah said as she threw her arms around Emily. She always thanked her relatives and hugged them after opening presents and was just reacting in the moment without really thinking about it.

A slightly startled Emily realized it was the first time she'd gotten a hug from her kid. It only took her a split second to react, wrapping her arms around the girl and giving her a gentle squeeze as she soaked in the moment of having her daughter in her arms for the first time ever. She didn't hold Hannah when she was born because she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to walk away from her if she did.

"What'd you get?" Steve asked Hannah curiously, walking over to the couch to see what had elicited that reaction. He could tell his daughter wasn't just being polite – she really liked whatever Emily had given her.

All too soon for Emily, Hannah was pulling away to show her dad the box the Kindle came in. "An Amazon Kindle," she told him excitedly.

Whatever his conflicted feelings toward Emily at the moment, Steve had to admit that it was a good gift for Hannah. She had always loved to read and had a bookshelf full of books in her room upstairs to prove it. She was running out of room on her bookshelf despite donating a whole box full to the library. An e-reader was as practical as it was thoughtful, something a practical man like himself could appreciate. "That'll be good for when we go to Stowe,' he mused. "You always finish all the books you bring and then you have nothing to do on the flight home."

"We go to Stowe for New Year's every year," Hannah explained to Emily.

"A ski trip with my sister, brother-in-law, and their kids," Steve expanded on the girl's explanation. He was trying to be cordial to the woman who had been so generous with his kid.

"Thank you," Hannah said to Emily again.

"You're welcome," Emily told her.

With Hannah's expectant gaze on her, Emily looked in the gift bag to see what her daughter had gotten her. There were three boxes of specialty tea in the gift bag – Chocolate and Roses, Almond, and a 'Christmas Cheer' holiday blend with apple, cinnamon and ginger.

"It's from this tea room in Georgetown that we took my grandma to for her birthday," Hannah explained nervously. She thought Emily would like it since the woman always got tea when they were at coffee shops, but specialty tea was nothing compared to an Amazon Kindle. "None of those kinds have caffeine in them." Hannah reached over and picked up the box containing Chocolate and Roses. "This one's my favorite, even though it doesn't have caffeine. It's really good."

Emily didn't expect anything big from a fourteen year old with no job. It was truly the thought that counted, and she could tell Hannah put some thought into the gift and took her preferences into account. Emily put her hand on the girl's leg and patted it gently. "Thank you."

As he watched them together, Steve was surprised to see how close his daughter and Emily were after only a month. The interaction was sweet, but it left him feeling uneasy. There was just something about having his child's birth mother there on Christmas Eve made him feel threatened – more so than he usually felt by Emily's presence.

The arrangement with Emily had been informal thus far, with either Hannah or Emily asking his permission before they did anything together, but now Steve was wondering if he needed to set some boundaries – no holidays being the first one that came to mind. He didn't want to worry about Emily showing up on Christmas Day or Easter Sunday. Holidays were his.

Technically Steve had given Emily permission to ask Hannah if she wanted to go to the BAU Christmas party, however grudgingly. After gifts had been opened, she looked at her daughter nervously. "Do you want to go my team's Christmas party?" Emily asked her. The profiler's eyes darted toward Steve warily. He was standing stiffly, every muscle taut with tension, his discomfort rolling off of him in waves as they both waited anxiously for Hannah to respond.

Emily knew then that it was a mistake to go ahead and ask. She could feel the previously unresolved tension between her and her daughter's adoptive father soar to new heights.

Oblivious to what was going on between Emily and Steve, Hannah looked at the woman with a mixture of surprise and excitement. The young teenager still thought Emily's job was pretty cool. "Really?"

"As long as it's okay with your dad," Emily said with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. It was definitely _not_ okay with him, but he was backed into a corner now.

"Dad?" Hannah prompted expectantly. She gave him a questioning look when he didn't answer immediately. "Can I?"

There was no way he could say no now. He didn't want to be the bad guy in his daughter's eyes. "Yes, you can go," Steve said reluctantly. He glanced at his watch. "Speaking of going, I need to get going or I'll be late." He would be fighting traffic to get to the restaurant where his firm had reserved a private room for the Christmas party, and he wanted to get there before any of his clients did. "Take Alex outside again before you leave, okay, angel?"

The dog in question was sniffing the wrapping paper and tissue paper on the floor with interest and looked up when he heard his name but went back to the trash on the floor as soon as he realized no one had anything more exciting for him.

"Okay," Hannah said.

Emily was hoping she would have a chance to talk to Steve before he left so she could try to smooth things over with him, but that would have to wait. He was clearly in a hurry to leave. She was so stuck in her own head with thoughts of how the unresolved conflict between her and Steve could affect her relationship with Hannah that it took a second for her to realize Hannah was talking to her.

"I'm sorry," Emily apologized. "What did you say?"

"I asked what time the party is. I still need to get ready."

"We can go whenever you're ready," Emily told her.

* * *

An hour and a half later (Hannah took a long time to get ready), Emily was trying to give Hannah a quick rundown on everyone she would meet that night as she drove to Rossi's.

"JJ's my best friend," Emily said. "Her husband's a police officer. They have a ten year old son and a three year old son. They'll all be there."

Hannah was relieved to know she wouldn't be the only kid there. As an only child, she was used to being surrounded by adults and was comfortable talking to adults, but it would be nice to have someone else at the party who was closer to her age, even if it sounded like the one closest to her age was ten. "Are they the only other kids who will be there?" Hannah asked.

"Matt has four kids, but his wife is pregnant with their fifth and wasn't feeling very well today so I'm not sure if they'll be able to make it," Emily replied. "And Dave has a daughter, but she's in her early thirties. She has a kid of her own and lives in California."

"Oh, okay," Hannah said.

"And you already met Penelope and Spencer," Emily reminded her. She thought it might make the teenager more comfortable knowing she would know some of the people there.

"Spencer?" Hannah questioned.

"You met him at the library, remember?" Emily prompted gently.

"Oh," Hannah said. "Dr. Reid."

"Is that how he introduced himself?" Emily asked in a somewhat amused tone.

Hannah nodded. "Uh-huh." He'd actually introduced himself as Dr. Spencer Reid, but she'd been taught to address adults respectfully, and it felt natural for her to revert to the more formal address for any adult. "What do I call everyone else? Like, do I call them Agent or Mr. and Mrs.?"

Emily stifled a small smile at her daughter's dilemma as she remembered the girl not quite knowing what to call her the night they met even though she introduced herself as Emily. She appreciated the manners that had been instilled into her daughter but knew her team wouldn't want Hannah to feel like she had to be so formal. "I think they'll all tell you that you can call them by their first name."

Somehow, even though Hannah took her sweet time getting ready, they weren't the last to arrive. Emily didn't see JJ or Will's car (she didn't know which car they would be driving) or Alvez's car as she maneuvered her car into a spot on the street in front of Rossi's house.

"An FBI agent lives here?" Hannah questioned skeptically as they made their way up the long driveway to the house. "It's bigger than my friend Madison's house, and her dad's, like, the founder and CEO of some tech company."

"Don't tell Dave that," Emily told the girl with a little laugh. "He already calls his house a mansion." The woman rolled her eyes in a playful manner as she hinted at Rossi's healthy ego. She realized her daughter was still waiting for an answer to her original question. "He is an agent, but he's also an author," Emily explained. "He's written eight books. One of them is being made into a movie."

"Cool," Hannah said.

When he opened the door, Rossi didn't make a big deal out of Hannah being there, which Emily appreciated. "You must be Hannah. I'm Dave." His demeanor was calm and low-key as he introduced himself to the teenager.

"It's nice to meet you," Hannah told him. She impressed him by holding her hand out to shake his, and he noted that, for a young teenage girl, she had a nice, firm grip.

Rossi stepped back to let them in. "Welcome to my humble abode. Can I get you anything to drink?" He asked as he ushered them into the kitchen. Before she could ask for one, he started pouring Emily a glass of red wine. He met her gaze with a knowing twinkle in his eyes. "I already know what _you_ want. What can I get you, Hannah?"

Hannah's eyes scanned the expansive granite countertop to see what he had out other than wine. He only had bottles of wine and appetizers out so far. "Um," she said uncertainly, not sure if he had soda or what kind he had.

"Do you want a Coke?" Emily asked her kid. That seemed to be Hannah's beverage of choice when they weren't somewhere that had fancy coffee drinks.

"Yes, please," Hannah said.

"One Coke coming right up," Rossi told the girl.

The teenager avoided the fruit and veggie tray completely but helped herself to the cheese and crackers that were sitting out on the counter for everyone to snack on while they waited for the main course.

"It smells really good," Hannah said sweetly. "What are you making?"

"That would be my legendary Carbonara de Rossi," Rossi said. "You know, I tried to teach Emily here how to make this, but she messed it up. A word to the wise – never leave Emily in the kitchen unsupervised."

"I'm surprised I'm allowed in the kitchen tonight," Emily commented wryly, taking the good-natured ribbing in the light-hearted manner in which it was intended.

"That's only because I'm trusting Hannah here to keep an eye on you." Rossi smiled at the girl, who merely giggled in response.

After they had drinks in their hands, they wandered into the living room where Penelope and Tara were talking wedding planning with Krystall while Reid studied the pieces on a chess board as he waited for Rossi to return to finish their game. Reid glanced up when he heard footsteps. "Hey, Emily," he muttered distractedly, his mind still on chess. "Oh, Hannah, hi," he said, surprised to see the teenager.

"Who's winning?" Emily asked curiously as she did her own examination of the chess board and quickly determined that the black king was about to go down.

"I am," Reid asserted. "Do you want to play me next?" He asked Emily seriously. She didn't play often, but she was a worthy opponent and playing her was always a good challenge for the genius.

Emily looked at Hannah uncertainly, not wanting to leave the girl to her own devices if she were at all uncomfortable. "Maybe later," Emily deflected, not unkindly. "Come on, honey, I want to introduce you to everyone else," she said, putting a hand on her daughter's back.

"Hannah!" Penelope said happily when the mother and daughter entered her line of sight. Wedding talk quickly forgotten, Penelope jumped up from her spot on the couch and hugged the teenager.

Hannah returned the hug. "Thank you again for letting me borrow your sweater," the teenager said immediately. "It's in Emily's car."

"Do you have any pictures of you and all your friends all decked out in your Christmas garb?" Penelope asked eagerly.

The teenager retrieved her ever-present iPhone from the back pocket of her skinny jeans and obliged Penelope by showing her the pictures of them all in the limo. From where she was standing at the teen's right side, Emily could see the pictures, too, and looked on with interest.

"What are you looking at?" Tara asked, joining the trio.

"Pictures from my friend's birthday party," Hannah explained. "She got a limo, and a group of us went to look at Christmas lights."

"That sounds fun," Tara said in a warm, friendly tone.

"Tara, this is Hannah," Emily introduced the other woman to her kid even though they were already talking.

"It's nice to meet you," Hannah said politely, shifting her phone to her left hand so she could extend her right hand to shake hands.

Tara smiled approvingly at the girl's manners. "It's nice to meet you, too."

"And this is Dave's fiancé, Krystall," Emily continued introductions, including the woman who was still sitting unobtrusively on the couch.

Emily was glad she could introduce the girl to a few new people at a time instead of overwhelming her with the entire BAU at once. With introductions complete, the ladies settled back down on the couch, scooting over to make room for Emily and Hannah, and resumed their conversation about Krystall and Dave's upcoming wedding. Hannah enjoyed hearing the story of their first wedding in a drive-thru chapel in Vegas when it came up in the course of the conversation. The women included the young teenager in their conversation, which made her feel more adult, and she laughed along with everyone else when Krystall described the Elvis impersonator who officiated the wedding.

By the time Luke arrived, Hannah was pretty comfortable with Penelope, Tara, and Krystall – comfortable enough that Emily was okay leaving the girl with them while she went to indulge Reid in a game of chess. Krystall excused herself shortly after to help Rossi in the kitchen.

Predictably JJ's group was the last to arrive – it always took longer to get out the door with kids, and Michael was being unusually difficult. He was tired and tearful. JJ just chalked it up to him being overtired and overstimulated from all the excitement of Christmas Eve. She wouldn't realize until later that night that he was coming down with something.

Penelope immediately got up to give her godson and the youngest LaMontagne big hugs. While her own children were otherwise engaged, JJ broke away to introduce herself to Hannah. The girl had been chatting away with Tara but was quiet and shy with JJ. Tara noted the sudden change in the teenager's demeanor, eyes narrowed contemplatively as she watched Hannah interact with the blonde profiler in a more reserved manner. Hannah was still polite, but she was a lot less talkative all of a sudden.

JJ was the team member Hannah was the most nervous to meet since Emily had said the woman was her best friend. The fourteen year old was unnecessarily worried that JJ wouldn't like her. She'd been a little worried about that with everyone on the team, but she was more worried about JJ's opinion of her than anyone else's.

Hannah was embarrassed and self-conscious of the fact that Emily's team helped find her the night she ended up stranded at the Metro station in Bethesda without her phone. She thought they might hold that against her. Emily hadn't said much to her about it, but she definitely wasn't sympathetic when Hannah complained about her resulting grounding. The teenager got the distinct impression her birth mother wasn't very pleased with her actions that night and felt like the woman's whole team probably shared Emily's opinion – they _were_ the ones who had to look for her in the middle of the night and it probably wasn't how any of them wanted to spend their night.

Michael helped ease the slight awkwardness when he came over to figure out who the unknown girl his mom was talking to was. He climbed up onto the couch, wedging his way in between JJ and Hannah, before turning to look at the teenager curiously. "I'm Michael. I'm three," he said, pronouncing it like 'free' and holding up three chubby fingers proudly.

Hannah grinned widely. "I'm Hannah," she told him.

"Hannah's Aunt Em's daughter," JJ explained to her curious toddler.

Michael looked at Hannah in astonishment. He didn't know Emily had a daughter.

"Hannah lives with her dad, but she's hanging out with Aunt Em tonight," JJ added, trying to stop her three year old from asking the questions she could already see forming – awkward questions that were bound to make Hannah uncomfortable. He was too young to understand the concept of adoption or how Emily could have a kid he'd never seen before.

Fortunately, Michael seemed to accept his mom's quick-thinking explanation and moved on. "How many are you?" He asked Hannah.

"I'm fourteen," Hannah answered him.

Michael's eyes widened. To him, that sounded really old. "That's my brother, Henry," Michael said, pointing his big brother out. Henry had made his way over to the other side of the room and was watching the tail end of Reid and Emily's chess game. "He's ten."

"And a budding chess player. He's waiting impatiently to play the winner," JJ observed, knowing what her oldest was waiting for. "Who do you think will win? Aunt Em or Uncle Spence?" She asked her youngest, trying to distract him from asking Hannah a hundred questions by turning guessing who would win into a game.

"Uncle Spence," the little boy answered confidently. His Uncle Spence was a genius. His Aunt Em was pretty smart, but she wasn't a genius.

"Really? Well, I think Aunt Em will win," JJ mused. "What do you want to bet?" She asked teasingly, tickling the toddler's ribs.

"No! Mama, stop!" Michael shrieked in between giggles, squirming away from her fingers. He climbed over Hannah's lap in his clamor to escape the assault. He made it to the relative safety of Penelope's lap on the opposite side of the couch from JJ, with Hannah sandwiched in between them and JJ. His mom wouldn't be able to get to him now. He cuddled into Penelope – surely she would protect him.

JJ nudged Hannah gently, wanting to include her. "What do you think? Do you think Emily will win?" She was careful to refer to Emily by name and not as Hannah's mom – she knew Hannah and Emily weren't really there yet and didn't want to say anything to make the girl uncomfortable.

"I don't know," Hannah said.

"Spencer's a genius," Tara offered in a conspiratorial tone as she tried to get the girl more engaged again. "His IQ is 187. Anything over 160 is considered genius."

"Really?" Hannah questioned with wide eyes.

"Really," Tara assured her.

"Okay, then I'm with Michael. Dr. Reid will win," Hannah said with a duly impressed look on her face.

Michael thought it was pretty cool to have an older kid agree with him and held his hand up in the air for a high five.

It took Hannah a second or two to figure out what he was doing, but when she clued in, she belatedly gave the three year old a high five.

"Wanna go watch Uncle Spence win?" Michael asked her eagerly.

"Um, okay," Hannah agreed.

The toddler grabbed the teenager's hand and pulled her across the room, the adults not far behind them.

"Alright, who's winning?" Tara inquired as the group crowded around the chess board. "Spencer's the favorite."

Reid wore a smug expression while Emily pretended to be insulted.

"You guys betting against me?" Emily demanded with mock-indignance.

"Hey, don't look at me." JJ held her hands up in a placating gesture. "I'm the only one who picked you to win. Even your own kid's betting against you."

Emily sent her daughter a betrayed look. "Traitor," Emily said lightly.

"I'm sorry, but Dr. Reid is literally a genius," Hannah said defensively.

Genius or not, Emily knew she would have Reid in two moves. "What did you bet?" Emily asked slyly.

"We didn't actually get that far. Michael?" JJ said, prompting her youngest to look at her. "What do I get if I'm right and Aunt Em wins?" She asked playfully.

The toddler thought about it for a moment. "Hugs and kisses," he proclaimed eventually.

At his age, it didn't even occur to him to ask what he got if he won the bet, but Hannah decided to help him out. "What do you get if you win?" Hannah asked him.

Michael looked to JJ for the answer. "Mama, what do I get if Uncle Spence wins?"

"I don't know. What do you want?" JJ said in a slightly amused tone.

JJ watched with raised eyebrows as Michael conferred with Hannah in hushed whispers. That could be dangerous. Hannah _was_ Emily's kid, and Emily had a wicked sense of humor sometimes. JJ could only imagine what Emily's kid might tell Michael to ask for.

It was a relief when Michael announced that he just wanted ice cream if he – or rather Reid – won. JJ didn't know how much of that was Michael (he _loved_ ice cream) and how much of it was Hannah's influence. Maybe the girl had inherited Emily's sweet tooth.

"You sure about that?" Alvez questioned the kids skeptically. "I don't know about chess, but Emily's the only one who can give him a run for his money at poker."

The toddler would be one sad kid if he lost his dessert.

"That's true," JJ told the kids.

"But this isn't poker," Hannah said.

It wasn't long after they agreed on the terms of the 'bet' that a grinning Emily checkmated Reid. Both Reid and Michael pouted a little, but Michael was soon smiling and laughing again when JJ snatched him up into her arms and peppered his face with kisses. His face was flushed but that didn't strike JJ as odd – she swung him around in the air a little when she picked him up and he was squirming around as she smothered him with kisses.

When they sat down at the formal dining room table to eat dinner and the three year old stubbornly refused to eat anything on his plate, JJ thought he was just upset because he thought he wasn't getting ice cream. She and Will tried to appease him with promises of dessert _if_ he ate his dinner, but he still barely touched his food.

Later, when they were at home, Michael would tell JJ tearfully that his throat hurt. And when she took his temperature, she would realize he was running a low-grade fever. But for the time being, everyone politely ignored JJ and Will's struggle to get their youngest to eat and continued their dinner conversation around them.

Emily and Hannah thanked Rossi, said their goodbyes and left after dinner. Emily didn't think it would help matters any if Steve beat Hannah home and felt like his daughter was spending time that could have been spent with him with her instead.

Tara had discreetly shared her observation that the teenager was strangely shy with JJ, and Emily wanted to know why but didn't want to call attention to the fact that Hannah's behavior was being studied intently by every profiler in the room.

"What did you think of everyone?" Emily asked once they were in the privacy of her car, trying to sound casual.

"I like them," Hannah said. "They're nice."

"Thank you for being so sweet to Michael," Emily said sincerely.

Hannah shrugged it off like it was no big deal, but she was secretly glad the woman recognized the time she spent playing with the little boy. She would have been nice to any little kid, but she had been especially nice to Michael because she knew Emily loved him. He and Henry both called Emily 'Aunt,' and Hannah remembered seeing a crayon drawing from Henry featured prominently on Emily's refrigerator. The teenager wasn't jealous exactly, but it was strange for her to think of these other kids knowing her birth mother better than she did. They had always known Emily as someone who loved them. Hannah hadn't known the woman for the first thirteen years of her life. She knew now that Emily cared about her, but she didn't really understand how much.

"I know JJ appreciated it," Emily went on when Hannah didn't offer a verbal response.

"Did she tell you that?" Hannah asked.

Emily glanced at Hannah out of the corner of her eye. "No, but she didn't have to. I know she did."

"Oh," Hannah said. "Do you think she liked me?"

Emily frowned slightly as she wondered why Hannah would think otherwise. Simply reassuring the girl wouldn't be as effective as uncovering the reason for the fear and insecurity and talking about it. "Why wouldn't she?" Emily asked directly.

"I don't know." Hannah hesitated. "You were mad I left my house and went to Bethesda the night we met."

Emily didn't know how this was related to JJ but wanted to clear up any misconceptions her daughter had about that night regardless. It wasn't the first time Hannah had brought it up, but it was the first time she said that. The woman shook her head. "I wasn't mad."

"Yes, you were," Hannah insisted. "When I saw you again, you basically said I deserved to be grounded and that you would lecture me if I ever did it again."

"You did deserve to be grounded," Emily told her child. "I know you were upset, but that's no excuse to leave home without permission. You are fourteen years old. You have no business being out that late at night. Anything could have happened to you."

It was a _very_ abridged version of the lecture she would have given at the time had Emily felt she had any right to parent the girl when it actually happened.

"Nothing happened," Hannah said dismissively.

"Just because nothing happened that time doesn't mean it couldn't have," Emily said seriously.

"You were mad," Hannah said quietly, her eyes downcast. She couldn't tell if Emily was _still_ mad.

The fourteen year old didn't know how to articulate it and wouldn't admit it even if she could, but somewhere deep down the lack of a punishment or lecture from her birth mother made her feel like she had never really been forgiven by the woman.

"No, I wasn't," Emily told her. "I was worried. There's a difference. In my job, I see what the world can do to kids who think nothing bad could ever happen to them - kids like you. When I think of what could have happened to you…" Emily let her voice trail off as she remembered the unparalleled fear of knowing her daughter was out there at the same time as an unsub who was hunting teenage girls. She took a deep breath. "I was scared."

"You didn't even know me then," Hannah pointed out, not cruelly.

"I knew you were my daughter," Emily countered. "That's all I needed to know to be afraid for you."

"Was your team mad?" Hannah asked softly.

"What? No," Emily told her.

"They weren't mad they had to help you find me in the middle of the night?" Hannah questioned with heavy doubt in her voice.

"We were working on a case. I didn't call them in just to help me find you," Emily clarified. "I didn't actually ask for their help. They wanted to help. They're my friends. They care about you because I do."

"And JJ's your best friend," Hannah said.

"Yes, she is," Emily replied. "And because of that, she doesn't just like you. She already loves you."

Emily wasn't sure if her daughter really understood, but she didn't know what else she could say to make her understand and they were already turning onto the girl's street.

"Thank you for inviting me," Hannah said as she fumbled to undo her seatbelt.

"I'm glad you could come." Emily reached over the center console to give Hannah a quick hug goodbye. "Merry Christmas, sweetheart."

"Merry Christmas."

**A/N:** Thanks for reading. Don't worry, Michael isn't deathly ill, but he may have made Hannah sick.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 18**

Christmas Day passed with the customary phone call from her parents, during which they talked about nothing of significance. Emily also received an unexpected but sweet 'Merry Christmas' text message from Hannah. Otherwise, it was a quiet day with the exception of a smaller dinner at Rossi's that included Rossi, Krystall, Krystall's daughter, Portia, Penelope, and Emily. It felt a little like Emily was intruding on Rossi's Christmas with his new family and she was glad that it wasn't just her but Penelope, too.

She expected the day after Christmas to be a quiet day of binging TV and catching up on work, but it wasn't. Emily received two phone calls, and neither of the people calling were bearing good news. The first was a phone call from JJ informing her that Michael had the flu.

"Oh, no! And he was sick on Christmas. Poor baby," Emily said sympathetically. "Do you guys need anything?"

"Thank you, but that's not why I'm calling," JJ told her in a slightly amused tone. Emily was missing the obvious reason for the call.

"Oh?" Emily said.

"Emily, Hannah played with Michael at Dave's house. If he's sick, she probably caught it from him," JJ pointed out. She knew her first thought would have been of her own children if she found out they'd been playing with a kid who had the flu, but that thought didn't even occur to Emily. As good as she was with kids, Emily was still learning how to think like a mother.

"Oh, no," Emily said with a groan as the reason for JJ's courtesy call clicked.

"I admit whiny, sick kids aren't one of the joys of parenthood, but kids get sick," JJ told her friend.

"No, it's not that. It's just…Hannah's adoptive father didn't even want me to take her to the BAU Christmas party in the first place," Emily started to explain.

"And if she got the flu there…" JJ allowed her voice to trail off as she realized what Emily was really worried about.

"He'll be even more unhappy with me than he already is," Emily said in a defeated tone.

"I'm sorry," JJ said guiltily.

"Don't apologize," Emily told her. "It's not your fault. Kids get sick, and we don't even know if Hannah's sick. I'm just sorry you're spending the holidays taking care of a sick kid. I'm sure you guys had better things to do this week."

"Ah, it, uh, got my mom and Will's mom to cancel their trips to visit us," JJ said, not entirely unhappy about that. "Don't get me wrong, I love my mom. And Will's mom is great. I just don't know if I could have handled both of them at the same time. I hate seeing my baby sick, but there is a silver lining."

"Hey, you don't need to explain yourself to me," Emily assured her friend. "A ten-minute phone call with my parents yesterday fulfilled my quota of quality time for the year."

"You talked to your mother?" JJ raised her eyebrows even though Emily couldn't see her. "Did you tell her about Hannah?"

It was Emily's turn to raise her eyebrows. "Uh, you mean did I ruin her Christmas by telling her that I let an arms dealer who was wanted by every law enforcement agency on the Western Hemisphere impregnate me? No…no, I didn't."

"You don't have to tell her about Doyle," JJ said gently.

"I wasn't planning on telling her about Doyle _or_ Hannah," Emily replied honestly. "Jayje, I know my mother, and she won't see Hannah as the good kid that she is. She'll just see her as a PR problem…an illegitimate child whose very existence could be damaging to her reputation in Washington."

"That's harsh," JJ observed quietly.

"That's my mother," Emily told her friend bluntly. "It's all politics to her."

"I can't even imagine what it was like for you growing up with her." It was no wonder Emily was the way she was – intensely private, slow to trust, and closed-off emotionally. JJ heard Will call for help and frowned, hating to cut the conversation short when Emily was actually opening up - a rarity in and of itself. "Ugh, I'm sorry, Em, but I have to go. Michael's crying."

Emily could hear the beginnings of a tantrum in the background. It sounded like Will was trying unsuccessfully to get the crying toddler to take his medicine and needed JJ's help.

"Duty calls. Go take care of him. Take as much time as you need," Emily said kindly, speaking both as JJ's boss and her friend.

With Rossi going to visit Joy in California, Simmons taking personal time to spend time with his family during the holidays, and Reid visiting his mom, the BAU team was down to just half the team as it already was. JJ taking a sick day – or week – to take care of Michael wouldn't make any difference. The team could function if they were a man down but not if they were down by three – now four with JJ. They wouldn't be taking any new cases until after New Year's. Knowing she would have too many people taking time off, Emily had already taken the team out of rotation.

Emily wondered if she would be able to see Hannah at all during the downtime, but then she remembered the girl was going skiing in Stowe. With morning news on in the background, she busied herself with a case that didn't warrant being an official BAU case because the murders were too spread out – only two dead in eight years. Both victims were adolescent females that fit a certain body type – petite blonde girls in their early teens. And, they were both killed in the same way and were found in roughly the same area, a middle class suburb of Los Angeles.

It wouldn't make sense for the BAU to take the case because it could be another four years before the next murder, but Emily had agreed to look over what the police had and make some notes to help with a preliminary profile for the officers to use in their search for the killer. Emily started with the crime scene photos and the medical examiner's notes. The way the girls were left showed classic signs of remorse. They were suffocated. The fibers the medical examiner found in each of their mouths were from a high thread count Egyptian cotton pillowcase – one unlikely to be found in a middle class home due to the high price tag attached. These girls weren't killed in their own homes. They may have been killed in the unsub's home or in an expensive hotel. Whoever the unsub was, he or she had money.

There was no bruising or scratches on either body – no defensive wounds or signs of a struggle. These girls trusted the unsub. They didn't fight back.

Both girls had sexual intercourse the day they died, but there was no DNA evidence. Perhaps they had an intimate relationship with the unsub. If they did, it helped narrow his age down – Emily was leaning toward the unsub being a male now even though the murder method and remorse could be indicative of a female. But if the girls had an intimate relationship with the unsub, it was likely a male, and he was likely young enough and good looking enough to appeal to young girls. Emily's best guess was that he would be in his twenties, and he might have a baby face or otherwise youthful appearance. Most young teenage girls wouldn't find the idea of being with a man in his thirties or older appealing. He may have been a teenager when he first started, but with the time that lapsed between victims, he would be in his twenties now.

It wasn't unusual for Emily to lose track of time when she was working, and before she knew it, it was almost lunch time. She would have worked through lunch if Steve hadn't called to see if she could meet him for lunch. He didn't say anything to indicate Hannah was sick, and Emily decided not to bring it up. She didn't need to give him another reason to be upset about her taking Hannah to the BAU Christmas party. She was already worried about why the adoptive father wanted to see her. Nothing good could come from it. She felt like she was going to be read the riot act.

Steve made it clear from day one that he was Hannah's parent and Emily being there now didn't change that. After Christmas Eve, Emily thought he might want to make it even clearer that she wasn't Hannah's parent. In his mind, Emily overstepped her bounds as the biological mother who had no parental rights and no place in their Christmas celebrations. It stood to reason then that the adoptive father would want to make sure she knew her place. But how would he do that exactly? Surely he wouldn't completely cut Emily off from Hannah. That wouldn't just be punishing Emily – it would be punishing Hannah, too, and Hannah had done nothing wrong. Even though she didn't think he really _would_ do that, the mere possibility had Emily's stomach tied in knots.

Feeling uncharacteristically nervous, Emily walked into the salad and sandwich place where they agreed to meet. It was near Steve's office and would normally have a lunch rush from all the businesses with offices in that part of D.C. but was unusually empty that day. Not many people were working the day after Christmas, and there weren't really any retail shops or housing in the area, just businesses.

Steve's civil but clipped greeting did nothing to put Emily at ease. She knew she was seeing the lawyer, not the father. He was all business. Emily wondered belatedly if maybe she should have asked Hotch for advice before going into this lunch meeting.

They ordered salads and got fountain drinks. Emily chose a table tucked away in the back corner that gave them some semblance of privacy even though there was only one other table in the whole restaurant that was occupied. Emily picked at her own salad, too nervous to eat.

"When I agreed to let you have a relationship with Hannah, unexpected visits and holidays weren't exactly what I had in mind," Steve started. He was cutting right to the chase.

"Look, I know I touched a nerve, and I'm sorry. It was never my intention to intrude on your holiday plans with Hannah. But when I realized she was going to be sitting home alone, I didn't see the harm in asking if she could come to a Christmas party with me. Would you really rather she spent Christmas Eve alone than with me?" Emily posed it as a yes-or-no question on purpose. He couldn't possibly sit there and say he wanted Hannah to be alone on Christmas Eve.

Steve held her gaze steadily, but there was a heavy wariness in his eyes. He hadn't known what to expect when Emily re-entered the picture, but now he knew how close she and his daughter had gotten in only a month and was beginning to feel a little like he was competing with the woman for his daughter's affections. "That's not the point," he said with a weary sigh. "Hannah likes you. I'm not going to stop you from spending time with her. I just think we need to agree that there's a time and a place for it. A schedule. No more unscheduled visits, okay?" He thought he was being generous – he didn't have to let Emily see Hannah at all, and here he was, offering regular visitation, just on his terms. From a legal perspective, the terms were more than fair.

"With my job, it would be impossible to have a regular day and time for me to see her. There's a lot of travel and late nights and weekends," Emily told him. "And you didn't seem to mind an unscheduled visit when I was helping her with French. You only minded when it was Christmas Eve."

What she said was true. Helping Hannah with her French paper at midnight was definitely not scheduled or planned, and Emily didn't remember the adoptive father complaining about that. He apologized profusely about how late it was, but her being there unscheduled didn't upset him then. On the contrary, he actually thanked her. It was only Christmas Eve that triggered this sit-down.

But Steve couldn't have it both ways. He couldn't have different rules depending on the day.

Emily knew he had all the power in this negotiation, and that's what it was - a negotiation. They were negotiating visitation rights. Emily had no rights to Hannah, not legally. She signed away her rights over thirteen years ago. But she just didn't have it in her to just give in without a fight, not when it meant she may see even less of her kid than she already did. She wasn't a lawyer, but she knew how to negotiate.

Steve lowered his gaze, knowing she had a fair point even if he wasn't willing to admit it. "Even if that were true, it still-" He was cut short by the ringing of his cell phone. He glanced at the screen and frowned slightly. "I have to take this. It's my sister," he told Emily before answering the phone. "Hello?"

Emily could only hear one side of the conversation, but it became apparent that Hannah was with Steve's sister and she was calling because Hannah was sick.

"The flu?" Steve said incredulously. "She was fine this morning. How do you know it's the flu?"

Steve listened to his sister's response and rolled his eyes. He was already ready for a fight because of the conversation he was having with Emily. It wasn't a good time for his older sister to act superior. Why did she always have to be such a know-it-all? It was annoying. Just because she was older didn't mean she automatically knew everything. "Having four kids doesn't make you a doctor, Jill," he told his sister. "Maybe she's just tired from getting up at the crack of dawn to go shopping."

Emily didn't know what his sister was saying to him, but she knew if Hannah was sick, it was more likely than not the flu. She bit her bottom lip and looked down, debating with herself whether or not she should say anything about Michael being sick. What good would it do really? Hannah was already sick – nothing Emily could say now would change that. All telling Steve how Hannah got it would do was make an already bad situation worse. That's what Emily told herself anyway.

Whatever Jill said next must have convinced Steve that Hannah really was sick because the next thing Emily knew, Steve was promising to take Hannah to the doctor.

Unbeknownst to Emily who could still only hear Steve's side of the conversation, Jill went on to question whether Hannah had been sick since Sarah died, not-so-subtly implying that the single father would be over his head with a sick kid. Sarah was a stay-at-home mom and was always the one to take care of Hannah when she was sick. Jill knew that and was only trying to help her baby brother, but the way she was going about it was just putting him on the defensive – something the profiler sitting across from him could clearly see.

Steve rolled his eyes to the ceiling, annoyed at having his older sister question whether he knew how to take care of his sick kid. "No, she hasn't, but I'm not completely incompetent," he answered in an aggravated tone.

Steve listened to his sister's response, which included a warning that Hannah might not be well enough to fly to Vermont the next day. "_If_ she has the flu," he said, "she'll start Tamiflu today, and she'll be fine tomorrow."

He must have gotten an earful from his sister for that because by the time he hung up he looked more like a chastised little boy than a hotshot lawyer. Nobody could take him down a peg or two like his older sister. It was a gift.

"Hannah's sick?" Emily queried in a concerned tone.

"My sister's convinced she has the flu," Steve replied grimly. "And we're supposed to leave for Stowe tomorrow."

"That sucks," Emily said with a sympathetic expression. "You're still going? To Stowe, that is?"

"I don't know," Steve said, shaking his head. "It depends on what the doctor says. Look, I'm sorry to cut this short, but I need to go."

They were leaving things unsettled, and Emily knew she wouldn't rest easy until matters between them were settled.

"I understand," Emily said. "But we do need to talk about this more."

Steve inclined his head in agreement. "I'll call you."

"Please tell Hannah I hope she feels better," Emily said.

* * *

When she was back home, Emily tried to concentrate on work but couldn't. She was trying to read the lead detective's notes on his interview with the parents of the most recent victim, but she couldn't focus on the words on the page in front of her.

With a heavy sigh, Emily set the police report down. She'd been staring at it for several minutes and hadn't even gotten past the first paragraph. She wasn't going to do much good as a profiler when every thought she had was of her own teenager instead of the teenage victims.

If all Steve would agree to at this point was scheduled visits, Emily knew she would inevitably miss a good number of visits because of her work schedule. The last thing she wanted was for her daughter to feel like her job was more important than she was. Emily knew that feeling all-too-well. She wasn't going to do that to her kid. And, even if she did, how many scheduled visits could she miss or reschedule before Steve decided it just wasn't working? She had heard all about the disappointment Hotch and JJ faced when they missed anything their kids wanted them there for because of their jobs. She didn't think Steve would allow her to constantly disappoint Hannah. Emily knew she couldn't agree to Steve's terms. But what choice did she really have here?

Did she need a lawyer? Emily would rather resolve this peacefully without a lawyer. Because she gave up her parental rights, she wouldn't have any legal ground to stand on. She didn't need a lawyer to tell her what she already knew – legally Hannah was Steve's daughter. Still, she could sure use some legal advice right about now.

There was one person and one person only who came to mind, but he would be with his son. She didn't want to take him away from Jack, especially this time of year. Emily picked up her cell phone and hesitated, her finger hovering uncertainly over his name in her contacts.

It wasn't easy or natural for Emily to ask for help, but he could help. Hotch not only knew the law but also knew her and understood the situation. She knew Hotch would be straight with her, but he would also be able to understand where she was coming from. He wouldn't just see her through a lawyer's eyes as a case that couldn't be won. He would _want_ to help her. They were friends.

Taking a deep breath, Emily dialed his number.

**A/N:** As always, thank you to everyone who read and reviewed. This chapter was probably not the most exciting, but it was needed to set some things up for the next few chapters.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 19**

"Thank you for doing this," Emily said gratefully, holding the door to her condo open for Hotch. "I hope I'm not taking you away from Jack?"

Hotch shook his head. "He's at the movies with his cousins. I'm glad you called."

He was glad she called. He wasn't sure she would after how they left things. Last time they saw each other, he reacted badly to the idea of Emily seeing someone who was an agent. As much as he tried to deny it to himself, it wasn't the fact that she was seeing an agent that really bothered him. It was the idea of her seeing anyone seriously.

It wasn't until she called him for help that Hotch knew he was forgiven. There was no way she would have asked him for help if she was still harboring any resentment or anger. She wouldn't want anyone she wasn't on good terms with doing her any favors.

"Can I get you anything to drink?" Emily asked.

Hotch declined politely and followed her into the living room. He'd been in her apartment before, and she'd been in his, but it had been a while, and the condo was new. Her décor had changed, but it was still what he expected from Emily – tasteful and elegant, with little touches that made it uniquely hers.

He took note of the fact that he didn't see any obvious signs of a boyfriend. There were no photographs of Emily with an unknown man. There was only one coaster on the coffee table with an empty mug sitting on it, no sign of a second. There was nothing there that looked like it belonged to anyone other than her. He couldn't help but wonder if there was any men's clothing in her bedroom even though he knew it was really none of his business. He was holding out hope that her new relationship wasn't as serious as he originally thought – and maybe he was looking for evidence, or a lack thereof, to prove that theory.

And if it wasn't serious, then what? Hotch didn't know if he would actually act on the feelings that he didn't even realize he had until he heard Emily talking about the agent she was seeing.

He'd had time to examine his feelings since their lunch that day, and he was self-aware enough to recognize his jealousy for what it was, even if he wasn't proud of that particular emotion and didn't really understand where it was coming from. He knew there could only be one reason for that kind of jealousy. There could only be one reason he didn't want to think of Emily being with another man – someone who wasn't him. He wanted to be with Emily.

For most of his life, he'd only been with one woman. Haley was his high school sweetheart. The only woman he'd had a serious, long-term relationship with since Haley was Beth. With Beth, he got to know her when they were trained for a triathlon together. The progression from training partners to actually dating was very gradual. Hotch was cautious about bringing another woman into his life – and more importantly his son's life. At the time, he was Unit Chief of the BAU _and_ a single father, and he felt like Jack deserved every minute of his spare time outside of work. His job took him away from home often enough without him leaving Jack with Jessica so he could go out on a date with a woman he hardly knew. Aaron Hotchner didn't enter into his relationship with Beth lightly. It took some encouragement from Rossi and unwavering patience and understanding on Beth's part.

He'd dated since then, but there was never anyone he was serious about. That wasn't to say he dated casually – that wasn't his style. Quite the contrary. He was a serial monogamist. It was more that he'd had a never-ending string of first dates where he knew right away that it would never work. Hotch was never the type to just have fun with a woman he couldn't see himself having a future with. He was looking for someone to share his life with. At this stage of his life, it would have to be the right woman for him to let someone new into the life he'd built with Jack.

It was premature to say the least, but Hotch found himself thinking about how good Emily Prentiss was with kids, his own kid included. She was one woman he wouldn't have any second thoughts about introducing his son to. Of course, Emily had already met Jack, but it was in a very different context than the one Hotch was thinking about now. There was a big difference between meeting one of his friends and colleagues and meeting someone he was in a relationship with – or rather someone he _wanted_ to be in a relationship with, no matter how unlikely the possibility may seem at the moment. He would have to actually be in a relationship with Emily for any of this to matter. He didn't like his chances with her. Until he did, it was really a moot point.

Hotch knew even if Emily were available, which she wasn't, he would take time to carefully weigh the pros and cons, the costs and benefits, the risk versus the reward before doing anything about what he was feeling. He didn't jump headfirst into any relationship. For him to open himself up to another person, there had to be some semblance of trust first, and Aaron Hotchner didn't trust easily. Trust had to be earned, which was one of many reasons he had a tendency to take things slow in any relationship. He would already trust Emily Prentiss with his life but trusting her with his heart was another matter entirely – one he couldn't even contemplate when he knew she had feelings for another man.

For now Hotch resolved to just be there for Emily and help her in any way he could. If they were friends who met regularly for coffee or lunch, he would know if and when she stopped seeing the agent she was seeing. He thought it was probably a matter of when, not a matter of if. It was petty of him, but he fell back on the knowledge that Emily didn't have the best track record for long-term relationships. He could wait for his chance.

They sat down on the couch to talk, with Emily's manners and breeding dictating she start with pleasantries. "How was your Christmas?" She asked him.

"It was good, but that's not why I'm here," Hotch said. He wanted her to tell him what was going on, not endure meaningless small talk neither of them wanted to have when something was obviously bothering her. Judging by the state of her fingernails, she was biting her nails and picking her cuticles again – something she only did when her stress level reached an unhealthy level. Hotch still found it surprising that the woman who exercised such impeccable self-control in most aspects of her life had never managed to break that particular bad habit. It told anyone who knew where to look – her hands – what her state of mind was. "You're biting your nails and picking your cuticles again," he observed quietly. "You're stressed. There's a reason you called, and it wasn't to ask how my Christmas was."

Emily immediately clasped her hands in her lap, trying to hide the evidence. Aaron Hotchner may not be a profiler anymore, but he hadn't lost his keen observation skills. She shot him a baleful glare. "I thought you quit profiling," she said lightly, not really mad. It was her own fault for succumbing to the bad habit she could never seem to break.

"That wasn't profiling," Hotch replied. "That was me knowing you well enough to know when you're stressed out. I don't have to be a profiler to know that. I just have to be your friend. Now tell me what's going on." His gaze was imploring but warm, his desire to help clear in his eyes.

Emily told him that she took Hannah to the BAU Christmas party on Christmas Eve with Steve's reluctant permission and summarized the unfinished conversation she'd had with Steve about scheduling a regular day and time for her to see Hannah.

Hotch raised his eyebrows. "With your work schedule?"

"I know," Emily said wearily. She shook her head, her expression dismal. "It will never work. What do I do?"

"There are several different angles to look at this from," Hotch mused. "Legally you have no case. He knows it, and I think you do to."

Emily nodded dejectedly.

Although he wasn't and had never been a family law attorney, Hotch knew enough about the law to know the outcome wouldn't be favorable for Emily if she were to try to resolve this dispute in court. But that didn't mean he couldn't help.

Emily had never been a lawyer or a single father. Aaron Hotchner had. He thought he knew what - and how - the adoptive father was thinking. Understanding it from his perspective would help Emily determine how best to respond to get what she wanted. It was essentially profiling, and Emily probably already knew some, if not all, of what Hotch was going to tell her, but he had a feeling she was thinking less like a profiler and more like a mother right now. She was too emotionally invested to look at this objectively.

"Most lawyers are competitive by nature. There's no logical reason for him to compromise with you on this when he knows he would win if it ever went to court," Hotch started factually. "His competitive nature could also be why he's only doing this now. He may feel like he's competing with you for your daughter's affections. Christmas Eve scared him because for the first time, he realized she could choose you over him."

"There wasn't even a choice. There were no kids at his party," Emily protested.

"That doesn't matter," Hotch told her. "She said she wouldn't have gone to his party even if she had been invited. He probably feels like she was picking you over him. But if she only sees you on a visitation schedule determined by him, he'll never have to worry about her choosing to spend time with you over him again. It takes away her ability to choose. What he's doing is selfishly motivated. But from everything you've told me, he's a good father." He glanced at Emily questioningly.

"He is," Emily agreed without hesitation. Nothing she had seen so far made her think the adoptive father was anything other than loving and attentive toward Hannah.

"Am I correct in assuming Hannah has no idea any of this is happening?" Hotch queried.

"I don't think she does," Emily told him. Hannah seemed completely unaware of the tension between Steve and her on Christmas Eve. Their lunch meeting to discuss it certainly didn't include her.

"She's fourteen," Hotch said. "She may have accepted it if a visitation schedule was the only way she'd ever been able to see you, but she won't accept it now that she's gotten used to being able to see you at any time. The first time she wants to see you outside of a set schedule and can't, she'll fight for what she wants. Teenagers don't just accept their parents' decisions without arguing. Tell me, what's her father's parenting style?" He questioned. "Would you say he's more authoritarian or permissive?"

Emily narrowed her eyes in thought. She didn't know that Steve fell into one category or the other. She knew he had rules for Hannah. Like any good parent, he seemed to keep tabs on where his child was and what she was doing. He didn't strike Emily as overly strict though. From what she'd seen, Hannah had a pretty normal amount of freedom for a young teenager. The girl had been raised to be polite and respectful but definitely toed the line of respect with her snark and sarcasm at times. "Oh, I don't know," Emily responded uncertainly. "He's not afraid to parent her, but he's not overly strict either. I guess he's somewhere in between."

"But he let her go to the BAU Christmas party with you even though he wasn't comfortable with it," Hotch pointed out.

"He didn't want to be the bad guy in her eyes," Emily told him.

"Exactly," Hotch said. "My gut tells me he won't want to be the bad guy now either. The second she argues with him, he'll backpedal on this."

"So, what, I play along with the schedule until that happens?" Emily asked him unhappily.

It wasn't Hotch's fault that her options here were extremely limited, but Emily didn't know how long she could realistically make scheduled visits work before something came up with work that prevented her from being there for a visit.

"It will happen, Emily. She's a teenage girl, and you're the only mother she has left," Hotch tried to reassure her. Personally, he thought it would be better if Hannah were the one to pick that fight with the adoptive father and not Emily. "But if you don't want to wait, the next time you talk to him, you can try to make him see what's going to happen before it actually does. You can do that without being confrontational by asking a few leading questions. For example, what happens if she needs help with French again, and it's the night before a test but doesn't fall on a day when you have a scheduled visit?"

"He could just hire a French tutor," Emily replied dryly.

Thinking she could so easily be replaced with a tutor was her insecurity in what role she could have in her daughter's life showing through. She tried to hide her insecurity with humor, but Hotch saw it for what it was. He shook his head dismissively. He wanted to shut that line of thinking down. "No tutor would help her at midnight. You only did that because of who she is to you."

"That's true," Emily acknowledged.

"So the question remains – are you allowed to help her in that scenario? Approach it like you're trying to understand the new rules and not challenging them or he may become even more defensive than he already is," Hotch warned her. "And that's the last thing you want. But if you can get him to really think about how this will impact Hannah, he might reconsider on his own. I don't think he'll want to be the only thing stopping you from helping her."

It all went back to Steve not wanting to be the bad guy in his daughter's eyes. But it would be a very fine line for Emily to walk because if he felt like he was forced into the role of bad cop while Emily came out looking like the hero, then Steve would definitely feel like he was competing with her for their daughter's affections if he didn't already.

"Most parents just want what's best for their children," Hotch continued. "I know you want what's best for your daughter, and I believe he does, too. You have that in common. If he sees that you both want the same thing and feels like you're on the same side, he might be more open to working with you on this."

"I can try," Emily said somewhat skeptically. She didn't know what more she could do to show Steve that she only wanted what was best for Hannah.

"I speak from experience when I tell you that being a single father is hard," Hotch said. "And I have a son. Raising a daughter alone would be even harder. Girls are just different. And, by that I mean that it can't be easy for any father with a daughter to watch his little girl grow up. If she hasn't started dating yet, she probably will soon. After all, she is _your_ daughter," he teased gently.

"Hey!" Emily said defensively. "What is that supposed to mean?" She asked. She wasn't sure if she should be offended by it.

"Your mother's Security detail told me how popular you were with the boys in Rome," Hotch told her in a slightly amused tone. "You were, what? Fourteen at the time?" He questioned.

"Oh, God," Emily said with a groan as she wondered how much her former supervisor knew about her activities in Rome. She only told Rossi that she got an abortion, no one else. "I was fifteen, actually," Emily told him. "And just for the record, there was only one boy in Rome. The other was just a friend of mine. A really good friend."

Hotch sensed there was more to that story than she was telling him, but he wasn't going to push her on it. All he really knew was that a boy had been caught climbing down a tree directly outside of the Ambassador's teenage daughter's window in the middle of the night. He wasn't judging her for her activities over thirty years ago. He knew who she was now, and that was all that mattered. The wild child who acted out in a desperate cry for her mother's attention grew up a long time ago.

"Look, all I'm saying is that you've been a teenage girl before. Hannah's father hasn't. He should want you on his side for her teenage years," Hotch said. "If you can get him to see you as an ally instead of the competition, I think it will go a long way. I'm sorry I can't be more helpful," he added regretfully. "But that's the best advice I have for you."

Hotch knew Emily could have gone to anyone with this. She had enough money and resources to hire the top family law attorney in D.C. if she wanted the best legal mind at her disposal. She certainly had the knowledge and skills to get into the adoptive father's head like Hotch had, but, if she was too close to the situation to do that, she also had a whole team of profilers that would have helped her think through it. The only unique perspective Hotch brought to the table was that of a single father. He knew Emily could have gone to anyone with this, but she wouldn't go to just anyone for help.

Maybe he was reading too much into it, but Hotch thought it was significant that Emily came to him. She was placing her trust in him – something he didn't take for granted. It showed that she valued his opinion, and not just as a competent profiler, but as a father and a friend. He wished he could fix this for her, but there was no quick fix or silver bullet. He thought it would work out in the end, but he knew that was little comfort to Emily right now.

"It was helpful," Emily told him gratefully. "Thanks again for coming."

"I meant it when I said I was glad you called," Hotch said. "You can call me any time. I know this can't be easy, and if you need someone to talk to about it, I want you to know I'm here."

Emily walked him out. The friendly goodbye hug she gave him in the hallway was no different than any other time she hugged him or anyone else on the team. It felt different to him though. Now that he was starting to see her in a different light, he was acutely aware of the way her body pressed up against his for the briefest of moments. With the difference in height of a couple inches, his nose was right by the top of her head as they embraced, and he could smell the lightly floral scent of her shampoo when he inhaled. He found himself missing the scent when she stepped back, none-the-wiser to the effect the close contact, however fleeting, had on him.

Aaron Hotchner definitely didn't see her as just a friend anymore, even if that was all he was to her.

* * *

Hannah officially had the flu _and_ an ear infection. She was curled up on the couch in the fetal position with a throw blanket draped over her while she listened to her dad argue with the airline.

According to the doctor she couldn't travel, but apparently neither the airline nor the resort cared about the doctor's orders. It was too late to cancel their reservations. She could hear the frustration in her dad's voice, and even though she knew none of it was directed at her, she still felt bad.

"You can go, and I can stay here," Hannah suggested seriously when he finally hung up. "I can even take care of Alex so we don't have to board him," she added helpfully.

Her dad looked at her like she was crazy. "You must be delirious," he said as he made a big show of feeling her forehead for fever. She did have a high fever, but he knew she wasn't really delirious. "When have I ever gone out of town and left you by yourself?" He asked his fourteen year old incredulously.

"You don't. You leave me with Grandma," Hannah replied unhappily. She loved her grandmother, but as the youngest grandchild, Hannah was very much the baby of the family in her grandmother's eyes. Now that she was a teenager, she really did not enjoy being treated like a little kid.

Steve wasn't actually planning to leave his daughter with anyone. He was going to stay home with her, even if he lost money on the trip. But he did leave Hannah with his mom when he had to go to New York for work, which was usually only a few times a year. His daughter's dismay at the idea of staying with his mom now gave him pause. He looked at Hannah with a startled expression. "I thought you liked staying with Grandma?"

Hannah had a long list of complaints she shared with him from the last time she stayed at her grandmother's, a bedtime chief amongst them. He had to admit everything she said sounded just like his mom. She had a lot of rules for him and his sister when they were growing up that he didn't have for his own kid. He didn't think she needed them. He didn't need to check her homework to make sure she did it. She always did her homework, and she got good grades. With the exception of finals week, she usually went to bed at a reasonable hour unprompted. She woke up when her alarm clock went off without any problem and made it to school on time. He started giving his daughter more freedom when she started high school, and that was what she was used to now. Hannah would have resented following his mom's house rules when she didn't have the same rules at home, not anymore. Steve only did away with some of the things Hannah was complaining about - bedtime, for example - in the last year so the relatively new reluctance to stay with his mom made perfect sense when he thought about it.

"I wasn't going to leave you with her," he assured his daughter as he played with her hair. His mom was in her late seventies. The last thing they needed was for her to catch the flu.

Hannah spoke up again before he could explain he wasn't going to leave her with anyone. And, what she said left him completely flabbergasted.

"You weren't?" Hannah said in a surprised tone. "Wait, can I stay with Emily then?"


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 20**

"Wait, can I stay with Emily then?"

Steve stared at his daughter for several long seconds. He was at a total loss for words. He had an almost pained grimace on his face as he tried to figure out how to even respond to that. It was completely unexpected.

"Can you stay with Emily?" Steve repeated his daughter's question back to her slowly. "Why would you stay with Emily?" He asked her.

Hannah lifted her head from the couch to look at him in confusion. "You said you weren't going to leave me with Grandma," she reminded him in an almost accusatory tone. She was hoping he hadn't changed his mind already.

Steve raised his eyebrows slightly at the tone. "I'm not," he assured her again. "But-"

"And Aunt Jill and Uncle Tony are going to Stowe with you," Hannah continued to reason. "Where else would I stay?" She wondered with furrowed brows and a perplexed frown. She couldn't think of anyone else in the D.C. area that her dad would leave her with.

"Here, with me," Steve told her. He thought that should have been obvious.

"But you couldn't cancel the resort," Hannah pointed out.

"No, I couldn't. But I'm not going to leave you here while I go skiing in Vermont, you goofball," Steve told his daughter as he ruffled her hair.

Hannah mulled that over with a contemplative expression. "The doctor only said I couldn't fly because of my ear."

"And your fever," Steve added pointedly with amusement in his eyes. "Let's not forget that."

"We can still go. We just have to drive," Hannah said.

Steve looked at her with heavy skepticism. "This from the kid who hasn't moved from the couch once all afternoon."

"I'm sick," Hannah said defensively.

"I know," Steve said sympathetically. "Maybe we can meet everyone in Stowe in a few days if you're feeling better before New Year's, but I don't think you're going to be well enough to go tomorrow."

At first when his sister called to tell him that his daughter was sick, the father had visions of still going on the trip, but his sister and the doctor at Urgent Care had disabused him of that notion.

Hannah had a fever of 103, which was a higher fever than Steve could ever remember her having. That fact alone scared him. He wasn't sure she'd ever been this sick in her life. Of course, Hannah got sick – every kid did – but she was usually the type of kid who wanted to go to school, or at least volleyball and other activities, anyway. Steve knew she must feel pretty awful if she allowed a highly anticipated day after Christmas shopping trip with her aunt and cousins to end early.

Hannah liked snowboarding and had been looking forward to going to Stowe, but there was no way Steve was going to drag her to Vermont when she was this sick.

"But what about the resort?" Hannah asked worriedly.

"The resort isn't going anywhere. It'll still be there in a few days," Steve told her.

"No. That's not what I mean," the girl protested in a flustered tone, giving her dad a look of teenage annoyance. "I thought you couldn't cancel the resort. I heard you on the phone. You were mad."

"Not at you," Steve told her. "I'm just frustrated that the resort won't make an exception to their cancellation policy for a sick kid."

"I'm the sick kid," Hannah pointed out. "So it's my fault."

"No, it's not. You can't help being sick, sweetheart."

The father thought that would be the end of the conversation, but it wasn't. Hannah continued trying to convince him that he should go on the trip without her throughout the rest of the day. She wasn't trying to be a martyr. She just felt guilty about the money he spent on the trip, no matter how many times her dad told her not to worry about it.

Steve never discussed finances with his young teenage daughter and didn't think he'd ever given her a reason to worry about money – she got almost everything she asked for, within reason.

While he didn't want his sick fourteen year old worrying about money, it _was_ an expensive trip. Any trip was more expensive over the holiday season because so many people traveled for Christmas and New Year's. They had reservations to spend five nights at a nice ski-in, ski-out resort that was over $300 a night at peak times during ski season. He hated to think of how much money he was losing due to the resort's cancellation policy, or lack thereof.

Hannah had heard him on the phone with the resort and knew he was mad even though none of his frustration was directed at her. That didn't stop her from feeling bad though. After all, if she wasn't sick, they would still be going. She didn't want to ruin the trip for her dad or cost him a lot of money.

The fourteen year old was getting increasingly upset by what she saw as her dad's refusal to listen to her pleas to go on the trip and leave her with Emily when he couldn't give her one good reason why she _couldn't_ stay with the woman.

By the time the girl took medicine and went to bed for the night, she had managed to wear Steve down to the point that he was actually considering leaving her with Emily - a major feat in and of itself. It was too bad she thought his job was so boring because she would make an excellent lawyer.

Hannah was clearly comfortable with the idea of staying with her birth mother. It bothered the adoptive father that his daughter would be more comfortable staying with the woman she'd barely known for a month than with his mom, but he understood why she didn't want to stay with his mom. And, it wasn't even an option in this case - he wasn't going to leave his sick kid with his seventy-eight year old mother. His mom didn't need to catch the flu at her age.

It made Steve feel a little better that his daughter had eliminated his sister and her husband as a viable option before asking to stay with her birth mother. His family – _Hannah's_ family – had been top of mind, but they would be in Vermont. To Hannah's point, Emily was really the only other available option. The problem was that he didn't want Emily to be an option in his daughter's mind. What happened if Hannah wanted to spend more than just the next five days with her birth mother?

There was no way that was going to happen. He wasn't going to let it happen. He needed to finish the conversation he started with Emily. They really needed to hash this out.

With that thought in mind, he dialed Emily's number. She answered after two rings.

"Is this a bad time?" Steve asked her.

"No," Emily told him. "How's Hannah?" She asked immediately, her concern coming through over the phone.

"She has the flu and an ear infection. She's already in bed. I thought we could finish our conversation now."

Emily was taken aback by that. She thought their conversation would have to wait until Hannah recovered from the flu, but she would just as soon get the conversation over with so she knew where she stood. "Oh. Um, I can meet you somewhere to talk."

The profiler wanted to be able to read the man's facial expression and body language as they talked, and she couldn't do that on the phone. Seeing how he was reacting would help her navigate the conversation without stepping on any landmines.

Steve was thinking they could just talk over the phone, but he, too, thought it was better to handle negotiations in person. He told Emily that he couldn't leave, but she could come to the house.

While he was waiting for her to arrive, Steve started cleaning up the aftermath of having a sick kid camped out on the couch all afternoon. He marveled at the sheer number of cups his daughter went through. There was a ceramic mug, a teal S'well water bottle, and an empty Styrofoam Jamba Juice cup out on the coffee table – all from Hannah. After he loaded the dishwasher, he folded the throw blanket the teenage girl had been wrapped up in.

Emily didn't knock or ring the doorbell when she arrived. She didn't want to wake Hannah up. Instead, she texted Steve and waited anxiously on the front porch. Even though she hadn't gone into work that day, she wore business casual attire to her earlier lunch meeting with Steve. She was wearing the same thing now - a crisp button-down shirt, black slacks, and her signature heeled boots. She allowed Steve to hang her black wool pea coat up and followed him into his home office. It was a room she'd never been in before, but it was further away from the stairs, and Steve chose it because their voices wouldn't carry up to Hannah's bedroom.

Emily's gaze swept across the unfamiliar room as she entered it. Her eyes were instantly drawn to the framed family photograph on his desk. It must have been taken the year before Sarah died. They looked like a picture-perfect family. Steve had his arm around Sarah's shoulders, and Hannah was standing just in front of her adoptive parents. All three were smiling widely for the camera.

When she sat down opposite Steve, Emily noted her daughter's report card sitting out on his desk. She could see that Hannah got straight A's. The mother was proud though she didn't know if she had any right to be. With the single exception of French, Emily didn't have much of anything to do with her daughter's successes or failures. The person her daughter had become had everything to do with Steve and Sarah Johnson.

"Where did we leave off?" Steve said to start the conversation once they were both sitting down. He knew exactly where they left off but wanted to see how Emily responded.

"We were discussing a visitation schedule," Emily replied, watching him carefully.

Steve was surprised she left it at that. He expected her to launch into an argument about it. She certainly didn't seem so accepting earlier. "So you agree to a visitation schedule then?" He wanted to clarify.

"I don't have much choice," Emily said, voicing what they both knew to be true. She still wasn't happy about it, but she was going to take Hotch's advice and go along with the schedule for now. Whatever she did, she was not going to engage in an argument with Steve. She needed to get back into his good graces.

"No. You don't," Steve agreed. Although he knew the law would be on his side if she fought him on this, he was relieved to hear the clear acknowledgement from Emily that he was in charge here. If they could both be reasonable about this, it would be better for everyone, especially Hannah. He didn't want a contentious relationship with the woman who was quickly becoming an important influence in his daughter's life.

"I do have a few questions," Emily said in a deliberately mild tone, trying to be as agreeable as possible.

Steve gave the woman a speculative look. "You do?"

"I can promise you that I won't drop by unless we have a scheduled visit," Emily began in a deferential tone. "But what do I do if Hannah seeks me out on a day when we don't have a scheduled visit? Maybe she wants help with French the night before a test?" She asked him, using the recent experience as a prime example. "Although I hope she's learned her lesson about waiting until the last minute," she added with a wry smile. They were both equally frustrated with the girl for waiting until the last minute to study for finals. Emily thought gently reminding Steve of that might help him see that they were both on the same side here.

"If Hannah seeks you out, tell me, and I'll…" Steve trailed off as he realized he didn't know what he would do in that situation. He knew exactly what recourse he had if his child's birth mother pushed the boundaries, but it would be different if his teenager was the one who didn't respect the boundaries he was trying to establish. And, based on the girl's impromptu request to stay with the woman, the father had to face the fact that it was a likely scenario.

Steve knew the relationship between Emily and Hannah wasn't all one-sided. His daughter had a mind of her own. She also had plenty of unsupervised time in the hours after school before he got home from work. If she wanted to talk to Emily or see Emily, realistically he knew there wasn't anything he could to stop her. Hannah had a cell phone and a laptop with access to the Internet. She had a Metro Card. She was fourteen. There was a certain amount of freedom and independence that went along with being a teenager.

The father let out a small, frustrated sigh. While a visitation schedule seemed like a good idea in theory, he was starting to see that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to enforce in practice. He had been thinking like a lawyer when he proposed it. Legally, the terms of a set visitation schedule were more than reasonable. But it just wasn't that cut and dry. Now he was thinking like the father of a teenager, and the only way he could see his strong-willed kid adhering to this new schedule was if Emily flat-out refused to engage with her outside of the schedule. He didn't think Emily would do that. And, somewhere deep down, he didn't know if he would really want her to. He didn't want to see Hannah hurt, and he knew she would be if Emily was unavailable to her or suddenly seemed disinterested in her. He made a mistake in not setting clear rules and boundaries from the very beginning, and now Hannah thought the door to Emily was always open to her.

"Dad?"

Steve's eyes widened and darted to the open doorway when his daughter's voice pulled him out of his thoughts. It sounded like she was downstairs looking for him in the living room. The nighttime cough syrup she took before bed should have knocked her out for the night. What was she doing up?

Emily glanced at him in surprise. "I thought she was in bed?"

"She was," Steve said. He felt like he was quickly losing control of the situation.

"Dad?" Hannah called again. It sounded like she was getting closer.

"I'm in here," Steve called out weakly. He knew the girl would ask what her birth mother was doing there, and he didn't know what he was going to tell her. This was not going according to plan for him.

Within seconds the pajama-clad teenager appeared in the doorway. "Dad, I – Emily? What are you doing here?" Without waiting for an answer, the girl shifted her gaze to her dad. "Did you change your mind?"

Steve stifled a groan. Of course she would think that. "No. We were just– we were just talking."

"Are you going to ask her if I can stay with her?" Hannah pressed on.

Emily's eyes widened. Did she hear that correctly? She frowned in confusion, looking from her daughter to Steve as she waited for someone to explain.

"No. Hannah, what are you doing up?" Steve said in an exasperated tone. It had been a very long day for the father, and it was about to get longer.

"I threw up," Hannah said miserably. "Should I take another Tamiflu?"

Steve took a moment to really look at his daughter and realized she looked worse for the wear from just half an hour ago when she went up to bed. He walked over to where she was standing and rested the palm of his hand on her forehead for a second. She was burning up. Hannah looked up at him through glassy eyes as she waited for the verdict.

"I think your fever's gone up," Steve told her worriedly. "Didn't you take Tylenol before bed?"

"I did, but I'm pretty sure I threw it up, too," Hannah replied ruefully.

"Okay, come here." Steve led the way into the kitchen, where the thermometer, Hannah's prescriptions, the bottle of Tylenol, and the bottle of over the counter cough syrup were all out on the kitchen counter. It looked like the cold and flu aisle of the pharmacy. He had Hannah sit down at the kitchen table and handed her the thermometer.

Hannah inserted the thermometer into the ear that wasn't infected and waited for the thermometer to beep. "103.8," the girl read aloud from the digital display for her dad's benefit.

Not knowing what to do, Emily had waited a moment before following them and was now hanging back awkwardly in the kitchen. She knew her daughter was a teenager and had been sick before, but it was the first time she was seeing Hannah sick like this, and she felt the rising panic of a new parent when she heard how high Hannah's fever was. That wasn't exactly a low fever.

One glance at Steve told Emily her current level of worry wasn't unfounded. He wore an expression that said _oh, shit_ but refrained from actually saying what he was clearly thinking.

Steve was silently debating whether he needed to take Hannah to the emergency room. Her fever was going up instead of down. That was the wrong direction. "I'm going to call Aunt Karen and see what she says we should do," he told his kid after a moment. 'Aunt' Karen wasn't really Hannah's aunt. She was a family friend and a nurse like Sarah was. They worked together until Sarah quit to be a stay-at-home mom.

Steve started heading back to his office, where he knew he had left his cell phone. He paused when he saw Emily as if just realizing she was still there. He saw the same overwhelming worry and concern he felt reflected in the woman's dark eyes as he passed her.

Knowing she would probably have to take more medicine when she already had an upset stomach, Hannah decided to get a Coke and see if it would help settle her stomach. She went to stand up and stumbled slightly, feeling lightheaded all of a sudden.

Emily saw how unsteady Hannah was on her feet and rushed to her side, wrapping an arm around the girl to steady her. Emily looked at her daughter with concern. "Hey, you okay?"

"I'm okay," Hannah said, offering the worried woman a halfhearted smile that wasn't very convincing.

"Sit down," Emily instructed gently, hovering nervously even after Hannah was seated safely back in the chair.

When Steve returned, he was on the phone, rattling off the girl's symptoms.

"She's lightheaded, too," Emily told him quietly.

Steve repeated what Emily had just told him to Karen. He listened carefully to the nurse's advice, nodding along as the woman spoke.

When he hung up, Steve looked at his daughter apprehensively, knowing she wasn't going to like this. "Okay, we have got to get your fever down. If you can't keep Tylenol down, we need to try an alternative way of lowering your temperature," he said grimly.

"What does that even mean?" Hannah asked.

Karen thought he should have Hannah sit in a bath of lukewarm water to help cool her off without giving her any more medicine. The only problem was that she didn't recommend leaving a kid who was lightheaded alone in the bathtub. Steve looked every bit as uncomfortable as his fourteen year old daughter when he relayed the advice to her.

"_What?!_ I don't need help taking a bath!" Hannah protested, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment and indignation.

"I know you don't need help taking a bath," Steve told his teenager in a placating tone. "But if you're lightheaded, you could pass out." He took a breath, and, swallowing his pride, turned to Emily. "Is there any way you can…help?" He asked awkwardly. He wouldn't ask unless he was really desperate.

"Yes, of course," Emily answered graciously.

It didn't seem like she was getting out of this, and her birth mother was the better alternative - though not by much – so Hannah decided not to argue even though she wanted to. Instead, she clamped her mouth shut.

The teenager stood up slowly, knowing it wouldn't help her case if she actually did pass out. She kept her angry gaze on the floor as she walked by her dad on her way to the stairs. She couldn't believe he was making her do this.

Emily stayed close behind her daughter on the staircase, ready to catch the girl if she got lightheaded again.

Hannah went through her bedroom to the en suite bathroom, flipped the lights on, and started running the water for a bath. She didn't look at Emily once the whole time. She knew it wasn't her birth mother's fault, but that didn't make this any better. She was fourteen, not four. She didn't need her mother to make sure she didn't drown in the bathtub.

The pajama-clad teenager hesitated where she stood in the middle of the bathroom with her arms crossed in front of her protectively. She didn't want to get undressed in front of Emily, even if Emily was her mother. The whole situation was totally and completely embarrassing for the young teenage girl.

"You can wear a bathing suit if it would make you more comfortable," Emily offered a solution to help preserve the girl's modesty. She knew most girls developed a sudden sense of modesty in their pre-teens that lasted until they were a little older than Hannah was now. Emily had to get over it when she was fifteen – she lost any sense of modesty she ever had when she got pregnant for the first time. The intrusive exam at the clinic took care of that.

Hannah finally met her birth mother's gaze with a grateful look. That would definitely make her more comfortable.

She wouldn't have been happy about this, even if it was the mother who actually raised her in the bathroom with her instead of the mother who gave birth to her. She didn't want anyone in the bathroom with her while she was taking a bath.

While Hannah was changing into her swimsuit in her bedroom, Emily tested the temperature of the water and adjusted the taps. If the water was too warm, it wouldn't be much help in cooling Hannah down.

The tub was full by the time Hannah returned wearing blue bikini bottoms and trying to hold the matching blue bikini top in place to cover herself.

"Emily? Can you tie my top in the back?" Hannah asked a little shyly. She moved to stand in front of the woman and waited expectantly.

Emily carefully moved the girl's hair out of the way and tied the top of the halter-style bikini top securely at the neck.

"Thank you," Hannah said before stepping forward and dipping a tentative foot in the water. She immediately stepped back out of the tub. "It's so cold," she complained, glancing over her shoulder at Emily.

"It's not, actually," Emily told her. "You're just hot so it feels colder than it really is to you. It will help you cool down. It won't be so bad once you get in. You'll get used to it."

Hannah took a deep breath and climbed into the tub.

Emily leaned back against the vanity as her daughter soaked in the tepid water. She kept a quiet watch on the girl so she would see if Hannah looked like she might pass out at any point. She was ready to swoop in if needed but only if needed. She was trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.

"What were you and my dad talking about?" Hannah asked curiously.

"How much we love you," Emily teased the girl.

Hannah rolled her eyes and gave the woman a look. "No. I'm serious."

"So am I," Emily told her kid lightly.

Much to her frustration, Hannah never managed to get what they were really talking about out of Emily. The teenager knew it was about her – she just didn't know _what_ it was about her. Not knowing was driving her crazy.

When Hannah finally gave up on questioning her and asked if she could get out of the tub, Emily grabbed the bath towel that was hanging on a hook on the back of the closed bathroom door. She draped the towel around her daughter's shoulders as soon as the girl stepped out of the tub. She waited for just a moment to make sure Hannah was steady on her feet. When she was satisfied that the girl wasn't going to pass out on her, Emily decided to give her some privacy to get dressed.

After the woman stepped out of the bathroom, the wet, shivering girl wasted no time peeling her swimsuit off. She left the pajamas she'd been wearing earlier on the bathroom floor and grabbed a clean Northwestern t-shirt and matching flannel purple and white checkered pajama bottoms from her dresser drawer.

"Northwestern?" Emily said when she saw the shirt Hannah was wearing. "A good friend of mine went there."

"My mom's family is all in Chicago," Hannah said. "And Northwestern has a good pre-med program."

"It's a great school," Emily told her.

"Where'd you go?" Hannah asked curiously.

"Yale." Emily gave her sick kid an assessing look. "Do you feel any better?"

"Not really," Hannah answered honestly.

But when Hannah took her temperature again at Steve's insistence, both adults were pleased it had already gone down by one degree.

The next morning Hannah's fever was all the way down to 101.5.

Steve was waiting to see if he would even be comfortable leaving his sick kid. He wouldn't have been if her fever was still as high as it had been. But once it seemed like she was on the mend, he gave in and called Emily. After the night before, it seemed silly not to. He knew it would have been a lot more uncomfortable for him and for Hannah if Emily hadn't been there. It had never even occurred to the exhausted father to have his daughter wear a swimsuit in the bathtub. He was a big enough person to admit Emily had been a huge help. He called to thank Emily and give her an update on how Hannah was doing.

"She's not quite well enough to go snowboarding, but she's much better than she was last night," he tried to joke before getting serious. "Look, I told her I wasn't going to leave her here and go skiing, but she wants me to go without her." He explained about the resort's cancellation policy and the phone call Hannah overheard. "She asked if she could stay with you."

"I can take her, but _only_ if you're comfortable leaving her with me," Emily said cautiously.

"I can't say that I'm entirely comfortable with it, but Hannah is," Steve said. "And I'm…I'm getting there."

Or he was trying to anyway.

**A/N:** As always, thank you to everyone who read and reviewed. I had two requests for Derek Morgan. I added in the Northwestern t-shirt and the friend who went to Northwestern as a nod to him. I may be able to come up with some ideas to include him in a chapter or two :)


	22. Chapter 22

**A/N:** This is a short fluffy chapter that's all Emily and Hannah.

**Chapter 21**

Emily never thought she'd get to have her daughter in her home for more than a few hours at a time, if that. With the way Steve had been acting ever since Christmas Eve, even that was starting to seem unlikely so no one was more surprised than Emily when the adoptive father asked her to take Hannah for the better part of a week.

As sorry as she was that Hannah was sick, Emily was grateful to have five days of uninterrupted time with her daughter, even if the girl would be spending most of that time resting to recover from the flu.

So far Hannah had been asleep in Emily's guest room almost the entire time she'd been there, but it had only been three hours. Steve was on an early evening flight and dropped Hannah off on his way to the airport.

Emily had a _Friends_ re-run on with the volume turned down low so it wouldn't wake her daughter up. She wasn't really watching TV. She just had it on in the background while she tried to reconcile the BAU's expenses with the budget they had to stay within. When Hannah finally emerged from the guest room and joined Emily on the couch, it was already time for dinner.

Emily saved the Excel spreadsheet she had open, closed her laptop and set it down on the coffee table before turning her full attention to Hannah. "Hey," Emily said with a warm smile. "What do you want for dinner?"

"I'm not hungry," Hannah said. "You can have whatever you want."

"What's wrong? Is it your stomach again?" Emily asked, frowning in concern. The last time Hannah's stomach was upset, her fever was dangerously high. Without thinking about what she was doing, Emily got up from the couch and moved to stand in front of her daughter, leaning down to place the palm of her hand on the girl's forehead.

"No," Hannah said in response, but she tolerated the parental gesture from her birth mother without complaint. "I don't feel like I'm going to be sick again or anything," she assured the woman. "My throat's just sore."

Emily thought Hannah felt warm but not like she was burning up. Now that Hannah mentioned it, Emily realized the girl's hoarse voice wasn't just from sleep. It was likely due to her sore throat.

"You have to eat something. What did you have for lunch?" Emily wondered, trying to get an idea of what she could feed her daughter.

"A smoothie from Jamba Juice," Hannah answered.

"Do you want another smoothie?" Emily asked. It wasn't a substantial meal, but it was better than nothing. Hannah couldn't keep taking medicine on a completely empty stomach or she would definitely get sick to her stomach again.

"I guess," the teenager said unenthusiastically. She wasn't trying to be difficult. It was just that nothing sounded good. Her throat _really_ hurt. Just the idea of swallowing anything solid made her wince.

"There's a Mediterranean place a couple blocks away that has smoothies. I have a menu around here somewhere," Emily said. She disappeared into the kitchen and returned a moment later with the takeout menu, which she handed to the teenager.

Hannah took several seconds to look at the menu and then gave Emily her order for a banana, apple juice and nonfat vanilla yogurt smoothie with an immunity boost.

Emily ordered online so her wrap and Hannah's smoothie would be ready when she got to the restaurant. Before she left, she handed the girl the remote control for the TV and made sure she knew how to work it. It turned out she didn't need to worry – figuring the TV out was an innate skill programmed into every teenager.

When Emily got back, Hannah was lying down on the couch, but she sat up immediately when she saw Emily – something which didn't go unnoticed by the profiler. Emily wanted her daughter to be able to relax and make herself at home while she was there, but the girl wasn't acting how she would if she were at home. She was acting like a guest who didn't want to impose.

Hannah thanked Emily as she accepted the smoothie. She always said 'please' and 'thank you,' but she was being almost overly polite if there was such a thing. She was thanking Emily for every little thing. Earlier Hannah had thanked her after asking if she could use the bathroom and being told where it was.

Emily sat down next to Hannah on the couch and opened the to-go container that held the wrap she ordered for herself.

Hannah hadn't changed the channel, but she had turned the volume up. Emily wondered if the girl really wanted to watch _Friends_ or if she just didn't want to change the channel because she thought Emily was watching it.

"Do you want to watch a movie?" Emily asked the teenager.

"We can watch whatever you want," Hannah said. It was Emily's house, not hers. She was a guest, and she wasn't going to just take over Emily's TV.

Emily went into the movies that were available On Demand. "Let me know if you see anything you want to watch," Emily told her daughter.

Neither of them saw anything they were dying to see as Emily scrolled through the new releases. It mostly consisted of horror movies, which made sense for the time of year - it was the end of December, and movies that came out before Halloween were just now available to rent.

"How do you feel about horror movies?" Emily asked her teenager as she took in the limited choices.

"Like everyone in them makes bad life choices," Hannah replied with a dry expression.

Emily chuckled softly at her daughter's response. "They're teaching you what not to do," she joked. "Never pick up hitchhikers and stay away from clowns," the profiler told her daughter mock seriously.

"I can't drive yet, and I wasn't planning on hanging out at any little kid's birthday parties," Hannah told the woman in an amused tone.

Giving up on the idea of renting a new movie from On Demand, Emily switched to Netflix and started going through the titles in the "Trending Now" section.

"_Sixteen Candles_?" Emily suggested, stopping on the thumbnail image of the movie poster featuring Molly Ringwald front and center.

"That's so overrated," Hannah said.

Emily gasped, mock-scandalized that her kid had no appreciation for John Hughes. "No!"

"Yes," Hannah insisted.

Emily stared at the girl in disbelief. "It's a classic."

"That's just a nice way of saying it's old," Hannah said dismissively. She preferred more modern teen movies like _The Edge of Seventeen _to outdated eighties teen movies. It was more of a generational gap than anything else.

"It came out when I was your age," Emily told her fourteen year old.

"And you're how old?" Hannah retorted with raised eyebrows. Emily just made her point for her. Her birth mother didn't act old, but she was…well, literally old enough to be her mother, and not in the teen mom sense. That made Emily old by the young teenager's standards, even if Emily was pretty cool for an old person.

"Old enough to have a teenager who thinks I'm practically ancient," Emily replied dryly.

"Not ancient," Hannah told the woman. "They didn't have TV in ancient times." She gave Emily a cheeky grin.

Hannah didn't really mean to start with old jokes, but the conversation went that direction naturally after Emily made the mistake of choosing an old movie from the eighties. Once she got started, Hannah couldn't seem to help herself. Fortunately, Emily seemed to take any jokes at her expense in stride.

Emily wasn't easily offended, and she actually thought it was nice to see the daughter she had come to know and love acting more like herself and not like the model child Hannah had been trying so hard to be since she got there.

"Okay, young lady," Emily said playfully as she dropped the remote control in the girl's lap. "See if you can find anything you would watch."

"_Beauty and the Beast_," Hannah murmured softly when she came across the 2017 remake, talking more to herself than to Emily. "That was my favorite Disney movie when I was little," she said a little louder.

"Because Belle's a fellow bookworm?" Emily guessed.

The profiler's guess was correct. As a young child, the girl saw herself in the smart heroine who loved to read and always had her nose stuck in a book. Hannah was continually amazed by how well her birth mother seemed to know her already. Sometimes it felt like the woman could read her mind as easily as she could read a book.

Hannah looked at Emily in surprise. "Yeah. And because she didn't need a prince to save her."

Now, that was the independent teenager talking – a teenager who sounded a lot like Emily.

"Let's watch it," Emily said, surprising Hannah further.

"We don't have to." Hannah immediately tried to backtrack, not wanting the sophisticated older woman to think she was a baby for choosing that particular movie – a movie that, at least in her mind, was for kids. The original version was anyway. This version wasn't animated, but still.

"I want to," Emily insisted. She wasn't sure why her kid was backing off of a choice they were both okay with, but Emily really did want to watch it with her. It was her daughter's favorite fairy tale, even if this wasn't the version that Emily imagined her daughter had probably watched countless times as a little girl. It wasn't the same as being there when Hannah was younger, but it was Emily's chance to experience a childhood favorite with her now.

Hannah stared at Emily for a several seconds as if waiting for the woman to change her mind before shrugging and pressing play.

"I want to see Hermoine as Belle," Emily said excitedly as Emma Watson came on the screen.

"You like Harry Potter?" Hannah asked, looking a little surprised.

"Yes. I'm a nerd," Emily admitted.

"No, you're not," Hannah told her. "I think everyone who hasn't been living under a rock has read or at least seen Harry Potter."

"I take it you've read the books? What's your favorite?" Emily asked eagerly.

"_Order of the Phoenix_," Hannah answered immediately. "What's yours?"

"_Half-Blood Prince_." Although she wasn't going to get into it with her fourteen year old daughter, the former spy could relate to Snape in some ways. _Half-Blood Prince_ resonated with Emily because of that. "But _Order of the Phoenix_ was a close second. Oh, I know what we're watching tomorrow. Harry Potter movie marathon?"

"Okay," Hannah agreed readily with a small grin.

They stopped talking and started paying attention to the movie when Emma Watson broke out into the first song. Emily finished eating within the first thirty minutes of the movie. She glanced at Hannah, who also appeared to be done. "Why don't you take your medicine now? It might help to take it with food, if you can call a smoothie food."

"It makes me tired," Hannah said. "I want to watch the rest of the movie."

In that moment, the girl sounded younger than she was. She didn't sound like a teenager. She sounded like a little girl who didn't want to go to bed because she was afraid she would miss something. But in this case, all Hannah would miss was watching a movie with Emily, and they could do that any time.

"If you fall asleep, I'll stop it and we can finish it tomorrow. We have five days to do nothing but watch movies," Emily pointed out.

"Okay, fine," Hannah gave in reluctantly. To the teenager's credit, she really was trying not to be difficult. She got up from the couch and picked her cup and Emily's empty to-go container up. She'd become more relaxed as the night wore on, but she was still trying to be a good houseguest.

"You don't have to do that, honey," Emily told her, not wanting her sick kid waiting on her.

"It's okay. I don't mind," Hannah said.

Hannah threw her empty cup and the empty to-go container away and then stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking around uncertainly. She didn't know where the glasses were so she started opening kitchen cabinets at random.

"What are you looking for?"

Emily's voice coming from right behind her startled Hannah enough that she jumped slightly.

"Jeez, you scared me," Hannah complained as her heartrate returned to normal. "I didn't even hear you come in."

"Sorry. Can I help you find something?"

"I was just looking for a glass," Hannah explained.

Emily opened the cabinet to the left of the sink, took a tall glass out, and handed it to the girl.

"Thanks." Hannah went over to the refrigerator to get ice and filtered water. Once the glass was full, she took it into the guest room, where she took her medicine – all three kinds. There was Tylenol to keep her fever down, Tamiflu, and finally the nighttime cough syrup without which she would be up coughing half the night.

When the girl returned to the living room and sat down next to her on the couch, Emily moved a velvet throw pillow to her lap and patted it in invitation. "Lie down, sweetheart," Emily urged her, knowing Hannah was right and all the medicine would make her tired. She really doubted her kid would make it through the movie. "You'll be more comfortable."

The tall, long-legged teenager could easily take over the entire couch – and had while Emily was out picking up food. There wasn't really enough room for both of them on the couch, not if Hannah was going to lie down…not unless the girl was practically lying on top of her birth mother like the woman was encouraging her to do.

Hannah hesitated, looking at Emily uncertainly. "I don't want to make you sick."

That was definitely true, but it was only part of the reason for her hesitation.

"I'll take my chances," Emily replied easily. As if to prove it, she dropped a tentative kiss on the crown of the girl's head. Emily held her breath as she waited to see how Hannah would react to the decidedly parental display of affection.

Hannah debated for another second before lying down with her head on the pillow in Emily's lap. At first, the teenager was stiff as a board, but the feel of Emily's fingers running gently through her hair helped her relax.

That was how the fourteen year old fell asleep.

True to her word, Emily stopped the movie when her daughter's eyes fluttered shut and her breathing evened out. She thought about waking Hannah so the girl could move to an actual bed but decided to wait a while. She didn't want this moment to end. She was finally getting to mother her child. As she looked down at her sleeping child with a soft, tender expression, Emily felt like her heart might burst.

**A/N:** Thanks for reading! Next one will have some Emily and Hannah, Emily and Mendoza, and maybe a little tiny bit of Hotch.


	23. Chapter 23

**A/N:** Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed. I lied when I said this chapter would have Mendoza and Hotch. It was getting too long so that will be in the next chapter instead. There's a little tiny bit of JJ in this one, but it's mostly Emily and Hannah again. The good news is that the next update should be pretty fast. I already have about half of it written.

**Chapter 22**

Hannah wouldn't remember Emily waking her gently and telling her to go to bed. She was still half-asleep when she got up from the couch and practically fell into the bed in Emily's guest room. As tired as she was, it didn't matter that she was in Emily's guest room instead of her own bedroom. The bed was comfortable, and Hannah fell back asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

She slept hard until the medicine started to wear off. As it wore off gradually, she started coughing in her sleep, but it wasn't until a particularly hard coughing fit at 5:47 am that Hannah really woke up. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. There was no light streaming in through the crack in the gold drapes covering the windows. Without looking at the time on her phone, the fourteen year old deduced that it was way too early to be up. She fumbled for her phone on the nightstand and stifled a groan when she saw it wasn't even 6:00 am yet. No one should be up at this hour. She hoped her coughing hadn't woken Emily up.

She sat up in bed, looking around through bleary eyes as she reacclimated herself to the layout of the guest room. Hannah could just make out the outlines of the various bottles of medicine on top of the dresser against the wall directly in front of her. She briefly contemplated taking more cough syrup and trying to go back to sleep but didn't feel like she would be able to. Instead, she turned the lamp on the nightstand on and reached for her glass from the night before, draining the few remaining sips of water and immediately wanting more. Her mouth was so dry. She wondered if she could get more water without waking Emily up.

When she ventured into the hallway, Hannah saw that Emily's bedroom door was open and tried to be as quiet as humanly possible as she padded into the kitchen. Although she didn't know it, she didn't need to worry about waking her birth mother up – Emily was lying in her own bed, half-awake. The sound of her child coughing woke her up. Once she heard the girl moving around, Emily got out of bed.

While Emily was in the bathroom, Sergio stretched, hopped down from Emily's bed with feline grace, and made his way to the kitchen where Hannah was. Now that the cat was awake, he was ready for breakfast.

Hannah felt something brush up against her leg and immediately looked down, feeling immensely relived when she realized it was just Sergio. She didn't know what she had expected. "Hey, Serge," she greeted the cat, bending down to stroke his back gently. Without even thinking about it, Hannah adopted the shortened version of the cat's name that she had heard Emily use when talking to him.

Her dog slept with her in her bed at home so Hannah was used to taking care of an animal first thing in the morning. "You don't need to go outside because you're a cat, not a dog," Hannah mused, stating the obvious as she thought about what Alex always needed in the mornings. She was still tired and not really with it yet. "Are you hungry? Where does your mom keep your food?"

As she spoke to the cat, Hannah scooped him up and opened the door to the pantry to see if she could find his food. Alex's food was in a plastic bin on the floor of the pantry so that was the first place she looked for Sergio's food.

"What are you looking for, honey?" Emily asked when she found the girl standing in the doorway of the pantry.

Hannah hadn't even known the woman was awake. Startled, she jumped slightly and spun around to face Emily. Disliking the sudden movement, Sergio leapt down from Hannah's arms and sauntered over to Emily.

"You're worse than Sergio. Wear a bell or something," Hannah grumbled lightly. "What are you doing up so early anyway? Did I wake you up?" Hannah asked with a guilty expression.

"No," Emily lied, not wanting Hannah to feel bad.

"I was going to feed Sergio, but I couldn't find his food," Hannah told the woman.

"Oh, I'll feed him," Emily said. "Can I feed you or are you still on a liquid diet?"

Hannah winced at the idea of swallowing anything solid. "I'm not really hungry."

Emily expected that answer after hearing how hard Hannah was coughing earlier. The girl sounded awful. Emily instinctively felt her child's forehead. It was still warm - a definite sign of lingering fever - but Hannah wasn't burning up.

Her birth mother's hand was cold, and it felt good. The fever had Hannah feeling hot and sweaty one minute and chilled the next, but at the moment she was uncomfortably warm. When Emily removed her hand after mere seconds, Hannah immediately missed the feel of it. Before she withdrew her hand completely, Emily took the opportunity to smooth Hannah's disheveled hair back – an action that made the teenager suddenly self-conscious about how bad her bed head was.

Emily decided to call JJ a little while later and find out what Michael was eating – he had the same thing Hannah had, and, somehow, she didn't think the three year old was having smoothies for every meal. In the meantime, she would make her kid a damn smoothie. First, she fed Sergio since, unlike Hannah, he actually wanted to eat breakfast.

Hannah leaned against the kitchen counter and studied her birth mother as the woman prepared Sergio's bowl. She had never seen Emily like this before – hair in a haphazard ponytail with a few loose strands falling in her makeup free face. Every other time she'd seen her, Emily's hair had been down, sleek and perfectly straight. And Hannah didn't think she'd ever seen Emily with no makeup on. The young teenage girl who'd had no mother to help her navigate the multitude of brands and shades in the aisles of Ulta when she first started wearing makeup always took notice of what kind of makeup her birth mother was wearing. The woman usually wore, at a bare minimum, mascara and a natural-looking pink blush to give her cheeks some color. Sometimes she wore lipstick in a pretty shade of mauve that Hannah had tried unsuccessfully to find. She could have just asked Emily what brand and shade it was, but she didn't – that would have been too easy.

Now that she was seeing Emily with no makeup on at all, Hannah realized Emily had a natural beauty with her clear complexion and big, dark eyes that didn't really need mascara or eyeliner to be her most distinguishing physical feature. The fourteen year old knew she had Emily's eyes. She had no idea what her biological father looked like, but she imagined he had cold, hard eyes. She was glad she had her birth mother's eyes. She didn't want to look anything like the father she had heard nothing but terrible things about. Maybe she would ask Emily what he looked like someday, but she didn't know if she would like the answer. She really didn't want to hear that she had his hair, but she sure didn't get her wavy hair from Emily. She couldn't quite decide if she had the same skin tone as Emily. Standing in the kitchen next to the older woman who didn't need makeup for a flawless look, Hannah felt more self-conscious than ever about every teenage imperfection. She had always hated the freckles on her nose. This was not the first time Hannah had compared herself to her birth mother – an activity that was very normal for any adopted child – but it was the first time she knew for certain that Emily didn't have any freckles covered by foundation.

It wasn't just seeing Emily with her hair in a messy ponytail and with no makeup on that was new for Hannah. It was also seeing Emily do the same kind of mundane domestic duties Hannah had watched her adoptive mom do thousands of times but had never been able to imagine Emily doing. And yet Emily carried herself with the same self-assurance as always as she set Sergio's bowl down, put Hannah's water glass in the dishwasher, and began taking the ingredients that she would need for Hannah's smoothie and her own breakfast out of the refrigerator. The young teenager could easily picture the woman who spoke six different languages and had lived all over the world eating a croissant and sipping coffee in a café in Paris. She had never really been able to picture the jet-setting woman with a kick ass job cooking or cleaning the kitchen, not until she saw Emily doing exactly that.

Emily felt her daughter's eyes on her and looked at the girl. "What?" She asked.

Embarrassed at being caught staring, Hannah looked down and tried to come up with an excuse for her intense scrutiny. She remembered David Rossi telling her about Emily's mishaps in the kitchen and realized she had the perfect excuse. "Dave said to keep an eye on you in the kitchen," Hannah said, looking up to meet her birth mother's gaze with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

Because she was used to her skills in the kitchen being questioned, Emily accepted the excuse with a roll of her eyes. "I'm not Julia Child, but I can make a smoothie, Hannah."

"Who's Julia Child?" Hannah asked, her face scrunched up in confusion.

"A famous chef," Emily told her. "She had a cooking show. They made a movie about her - _Julie & Julia_? Meryl Streep played her." Her kid was just staring at her blankly. Emily gave up on the reference that had gone right over the young teenager's head and handed the girl her smoothie. "Here. Just take your smoothie."

"Thank you." Hannah accepted the glass and took a sip of the icy beverage, letting it soothe her raw throat as she watched Emily crack an egg open. "What are you making now?" The teenager asked warily.

"Scrambled eggs," Emily replied. "Why? Do you want some?"

"No, thanks. Eggs seem…ambitious," Hannah said, trying unsuccessfully to be tactful. Based on Dave's unflattering assessment of Emily's cooking skills, Hannah would have pegged the woman as more of a cereal or bagel person. There were plenty of breakfast foods that required no culinary skills whatsoever.

Emily gave her kid an exasperated look. "Contrary to popular belief, I can actually cook."

"Okay," Hannah said, still looking a little skeptical.

In the end, Hannah had to admit that the scrambled eggs Emily made for herself actually looked good, but she was secretly glad she didn't have to eat the woman's cooking.

Following Emily's lead, Hannah took her smoothie into the living room and sat down on the couch next to the woman, who turned the TV on and queued up the first Harry Potter movie for their marathon.

Hannah glanced at Emily in surprise. "Don't you have to go to work?" It was a Friday, and she didn't want her birth mother to feel like she had to stay home on her account.

"I'm off until the day after New Year's," Emily told her.

"Did you take off because of me?" Hannah asked, not really sure how she felt about that. She knew Emily's job was important. Her lasting first impression of Emily was of the woman in her role as FBI agent. She remembered the older woman looking tall and strong and impressive as she stood there in her suit with her gun holstered at her hip. Now she knew her birth mother wasn't just an agent – she was the boss. "Because you didn't have to do that," the teenager continued without waiting for a response. "You can go to work."

Emily explained that they had too many members of the team taking time off so the BAU was taken out of rotation. Hannah seemed satisfied with the explanation and settled in to watch the first of many movies.

They took a break after the first movie to take showers. Emily's condo had two bathrooms – the en suite in the master bedroom and a smaller bathroom in the hallway that had a tiny shower, a sink with no counter space, and a toilet. It was fine for guests who needed to use a bathroom while they were over but not exactly ideal for a teenage girl to get ready in. Emily told Hannah she could use the master bathroom if she wanted, but Hannah assured her that the guest bathroom was fine.

Emily got her daughter a clean bath towel from the linen closet and made sure the rarely used shower in the second bathroom had body wash, shampoo and conditioner in it before leaving Hannah to it. The girl took note of the brand of shampoo and conditioner. She knew her hair was different from her birth mother's, and Emily's hair products might not work as well on her wavy hair, but she liked the lightly floral scent.

After her shower, Hannah brushed her hair out and put a clean grey hooded sweatshirt and black leggings with a single purple stripe down the side of each leg on – comfortable clothes for lying around the house. When she emerged from the guest bathroom, Emily called her into the master bathroom.

Emily was also wearing more casual attire – a long-sleeve purple workout top and black yoga pants. She was blow drying her hair but stopped when she heard Hannah in the hallway. The woman took a thermometer out of the medicine cabinet and had the girl take her temperature. It was just as she thought - Hannah still had a low-grade fever of 100.1.

"When did you take something last?" Emily questioned. She knew Hannah had Tylenol (among other things) in her room. She thought fourteen was old enough to know how much medicine she could take. While she didn't think Hannah would take too much of anything, Emily wasn't sure if the teenager was staying on top of the fever reducer or just taking it before she went to bed. Emily really didn't want a repeat of the scary high fever Hannah had the first night she was sick.

"Last night," Hannah answered honestly.

Emily shook two Tylenol caplets out of a bottle and gave them to her daughter. "You need to stay on top of the Tylenol. That's the only way your fever's going to stay down."

"Okay," Hannah conceded easily. "It's just that all the medicine is upsetting my stomach, but I think it's mainly the cough syrup." The teenager made a face as she thought of the strong taste that made her feel like she was going to be sick every time she practically gagged it down. It was Nyquil cough syrup, which is what her adoptive parents had always sworn by. Hannah had always hated taking it. She was pretty sure it was the only reason she threw up the other night.

"Cough syrup _does_ taste pretty bad," Emily had to agree. She frowned slightly as she rummaged through the medicine cabinet, moving bottles and boxes out of the way until she found what she was looking for. She handed her daughter an old box of cold and flu medicine in a soft gel pill form. "You can try these pills instead if you want," she offered.

"Thank you," Hannah said, brightening a little. She figured anything had to be better than the nasty cough syrup.

They picked their movie marathon back up with _Chamber of Secrets_ and were at the part where Ginny was taken into the Chamber when Hannah drifted off to sleep. The girl had somehow ended up lying down with her head in Emily's lap again, not that Emily was complaining. On the contrary, the mother was soaking up this closeness with her fourteen year old – a closeness Emily would never have allowed her own mother when she was a teenager, not that Elizabeth Prentiss would have ever taken care of Emily when she was sick. That was what the housekeeper was for. And that upbringing was why Emily was so fiercely independent, both as a child and now as an adult.

Emily knew part of the reason her kid's defenses were down was just because Hannah was sick right now. All kids wanted comfort when they were sick. She remembered Declan, who was always a warm, affectionate little boy, being even more cuddly than usual whenever he wasn't feeling well. She didn't really expect her teenager to be cuddly – teenagers were generally easily embarrassed by parental displays of affection. As kids entered their teenage years, they suddenly shied away from being hugged or kissed by their parents in public. It felt like a huge win to have this degree of familiarity and intimacy in her relationship with the daughter who had been so reserved in their initial interactions – a daughter who had not grown up knowing Emily's love. Emily didn't know if her kid would ever be this open to motherly affection and care from her again, but she was going to take full advantage of it while she could. And she wasn't going to let Hannah go back to keeping her at arm's length once the girl was feeling better. This week would be a turning point for them.

Emily stopped the movie and very slowly and carefully maneuvered to get up without waking Hannah. She then went into her bedroom to call JJ.

"Hey. Do we have a case?" The blonde profiler asked anxiously when she answered the phone.

"No," Emily said immediately, putting her friend's mind at ease. "Is Michael still sick?"

"Yes, but he doesn't think so," JJ replied with a pointed look at her youngest son. He was currently racing a toy car across her kitchen floor…and into her wall with a resounding crash. JJ cringed. That would leave a mark. "He was tired the last couple of days, but today he's just full of energy. Is it too early to give him Benadryl?" JJ joked.

Emily was able to laugh at her friend's struggle since her own kid was a lazy teenager. "I don't know. Hannah can't stay awake for more than a few hours at a time."

"That's how Michael was until today. I miss those days," JJ told her friend lightly.

Of course, JJ was glad her child was acting like he felt better, but now she and Will were fighting a losing battle trying to get the rambunctious three year old to rest. He was an active little boy. He wasn't interested in sitting still and watching a movie or being read to.

"Maybe the reason mine has no energy is because she's hardly eating," Emily mused.

"And mine is probably on a sugar high," JJ said ruefully. "I've lost count of how many popsicles he's had."

The mothers commiserated over the struggle of trying to feed their sick kids. JJ suggested oatmeal and soup – the only healthy foods she'd been able to get Michael to eat the first few days he was sick.

As it turned out, soup sounded good to Hannah. And the teenager wasted no time digging into the box of popsicles Emily bought. In fact, the only thing Emily got on her grocery store run that Hannah absolutely would not eat was oatmeal. The fourteen year old claimed oatmeal looked gross and tasted like cardboard. Emily responded by asking if she ate a lot of cardboard with a deadpan expression.

Hannah took it easy for her first two full days with Emily. They were working their way through the Harry Potter movies slowly but surely, with the sick, tired teenager falling asleep in front of the TV more often than not.

On the third morning Hannah was there, the girl woke up without a fever for the first time and was acting like she felt much better. They were watching the sixth Harry Potter movie, but the restless teenager was tired of doing nothing but watching movies now that she had a little more energy. Hannah was on her phone pretty much the whole time, playing a game to entertain herself while watching the movie she'd seen multiple times but still enjoyed.

Hannah glanced up from her phone when Harry finally figured out who his borrowed Potions textbook belonged to. "Okay, really? How did Harry not recognize the Half-Blood Prince's handwriting as the same handwriting marking his potions essays for the last five years? This is why he's not in Ravenclaw."

Emily looked at her teenager with amusement. "There are so many reasons why he's not in Ravenclaw."

Together, Emily and Hannah proceeded to analyze everything the main character of the series had done that wasn't the most intelligent or was, in Hannah's words, a 'dumbass move.'

They liked the books, but that didn't mean they couldn't enjoy mocking Harry's worst decisions.

The teenager was momentarily distracted by an incoming text message on a group text thread. "Can I go out on New Year's Eve?" She asked suddenly after reading the text.

The question took Emily by surprise. She knew most teenagers would rather be out with their friends than sitting at home with a parent on New Year's Eve, but it hadn't really occurred to her that her sick kid would even be well enough to go out. She hadn't discussed the prospect with Steve at all and didn't know what to do in this situation. "Oh…I don't know," Emily said hesitantly.

"I don't have a fever anymore if that's what you're worried about," Hannah reminded her birth mother unnecessarily.

"You haven't even gone twenty-four hours without a fever," Emily pointed out. But that was actually the least of Emily's concerns. She was just using it to buy some time. She didn't know whether the adoptive father would let Hannah go out on New Year's Eve or how late he let the teenager stay out or…anything really.

"But if I do, can I go out?" Hannah pressed on, undeterred by her birth mother's delay tactic.

"You have to ask your dad," Emily told the girl. It was the only safe answer she felt like she could give. Being either more laidback _or_ stricter than Steve was with her daughter would definitely come back to haunt her later. If she said yes when Steve wouldn't have, he would have every right to be unhappy with her. On the other hand, if she said no, she didn't think Hannah would be too happy with her.

Hannah's face fell with disappointment. She knew her dad would ask questions and had hoped her birth mother would just say yes.

It was wishful thinking on the teenager's part – even if Emily had been comfortable saying yes without talking to Steve, she wouldn't have said yes without asking just as many questions as the adoptive father, if not more. With the things she had seen happen to kids in her job, Emily would never allow her teenager to go 'out' without knowing exactly where the girl was going and what she was doing.

Hannah would never have imagined the cool older woman as the stricter of her two parents. There were still times when she saw Emily as a little bit more of a friend than a parent, though that was changing quickly. The line between the two distinct roles was more blurred than ever in Hannah's mind after her birth mother had spent the last few days coddling her. The woman deferring to her dad on this reminded Hannah that Emily wasn't _really_ her parent, not like her dad was. Of course, that wasn't fair to Emily, but Hannah didn't know everything that had gone on between her dad and her birth mother and failed to grasp the complexity of the situation. To the fourteen year old, it seemed pretty straightforward for the parent she was staying with to give her permission to go out with her friends, but it wasn't straightforward at all. Hannah didn't understand what an uncomfortable position she was putting her birth mother in.

By the time her dad called that night, just as he had every night he'd been gone, Hannah was prepared to make her case to him. She had her arguments ready. Her dad was a fairly stereotypical overprotective dad of a teenage daughter, but Hannah knew how to work him. When her phone rang, Hannah went into the guest room to talk to him.

"Hi, Daddy," was the last thing Emily heard before Hannah made it into the relative privacy of the guest room. Emily smirked slightly at the form of address. She had never once heard Hannah call Steve 'Daddy.' He was always 'Dad.' It was so obvious that the girl wanted something.

A little while later Hannah emerged from the guest room and held her phone out for Emily to take. "My dad wants to talk to you."

**A/N:** Thanks for reading! This is the last of sick Hannah. I know that's probably getting a little old. Please let me know what you think.


	24. Chapter 24

**A/N:** Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed. This is a really long chapter. I incorporated one new character from the last few episodes of CM into this, but it does not play out the way it did in the show. I don't know if it would be considered spoiler-ish since I don't give away what actually happened, but this is a spoiler warning just in case. The part I'm referring to is at the very end during Emily's date with Andrew.

**Chapter 23**

"My dad wants to talk to you."

Emily took the phone from her daughter, not really knowing what to expect.

Steve was actually very pleasant. He already knew from his conversation with Hannah that she asked her birth mother for permission to go out, and Emily told her that she needed to ask him. By doing that Emily was showing him that she respected his role as Hannah's father – something he needed to know to feel comfortable with the woman's increasing presence in his daughter's life.

After a lot of begging and pleading from Hannah, who reminded him that she'd been sick almost all week and hadn't been able to do anything with her friends, the father was going to let his daughter go to the New Year's Eve party, but he needed to talk to Emily first and make sure she was okay with it. Hannah was staying with her, and he didn't know what other plans the woman might have. If Hannah went out, Steve wanted to make sure there was a responsible adult who could go get her from the party if she needed a ride.

When she thought she'd have Hannah home with her for the night, Emily was thinking about inviting Penelope and Tara – the single ladies of the BAU - over for a girl's night on New Year's Eve. It would have been something fun for the adults and the teenager. However, if Hannah was going out, Emily would probably end up going out with Andrew.

He'd asked, and she never really said no, but she hadn't exactly said yes either. Even before she agreed to take Hannah for the better part of a week, Emily was on the fence about spending New Year's Eve with the man she'd only seen a few times. A date on New Year's Eve seemed like a big deal to the woman who was a little bit of a commitment-phobe in relationships. It wasn't really commitment she was afraid of. It was opening herself to up to the possibility of heartache.

In response to the adoptive father's inquiry about whether she had other plans, Emily simply said she had dinner plans with a friend but assured him that Hannah could call her any time and she'd go get the girl.

Once she had permission to go out, Hannah immediately started trying to negotiate her 11:00 pm curfew with her dad. Emily listened as the young teenager argued that no one else had a curfew that early. According to Hannah, _everyone_ would be out until midnight because it was New Year's Eve. Emily couldn't help but be mildly amused by the teenage girl's dramatics.

Hannah let out a long-suffering sigh at Steve's response, said goodbye, and handed the phone back to Emily in a defeated manner. "He wants to talk to you again."

It was _so_ terrible to be a teenager with an attentive parent who wouldn't allow her to stay out all night and do whatever she wanted. Emily fought the urge to roll her eyes at her pouting fourteen year old and instead offered the girl a small smile as she took the phone to see what Steve had to say now.

Steve had compromised and extended Hannah's curfew to 11:30, but he did _not_ want her out at midnight on New Year's Eve with all the drunk drivers out there. It wasn't just teenagers going home from high school parties that he was worried about, but college kids leaving the bars and twenty-somethings leaving clubs. He didn't ever think his young teenage daughter needed to be out that late, and he definitely didn't want her out that late on New Year's Eve. He just didn't think it was a good idea, and Emily privately agreed.

With both adults on the same page, Emily hung up with Steve and returned her daughter's phone. "Oh, stop pouting," Emily said, chuckling softly. "Your dad's not here to see it."

"I'm _not_ pouting," Hannah protested with an indignant look at her birth mother. She wasn't _pouting_ – she just thought it was unfair that she was the only one in her school who had an 11:00 pm curfew. Her dad had compromised but barely, and now, instead of sympathy or understanding, Emily was laughing at her.

In that moment, Emily could just picture her daughter as a little girl, but, instead of the bright smile Emily had seen in pictures, the version of her daughter that Emily conjured in her mind had the same dark, stormy eyes and the same pursed lips that Hannah had now. It would have been much more endearing on the four year old Emily was imagining than it was on the teenager sitting next to her on the couch, but four years old or fourteen years old, Hannah was her kid, and her adorable pout had the same effect on Emily. The mother stifled a smile. "Yes, you are. It's kind of cute."

Hannah sat on the couch with her arms crossed in front of her, the very picture of a sullen teenager, and turned her head to glare at her birth mother in an affronted manner. She was fourteen. She wasn't pouting, and she wasn't cute.

With Hannah's arms crossed in front of her chest like that, her side was unprotected. Emily took the opportunity to poke her daughter's side in a playful manner, her index finger getting the girl right between her ribs in a spot that was especially ticklish.

Hannah shrieked in surprise. Try as she might to maintain her glare, she couldn't help laughing - a natural response to the sensation, however short-lived, of being tickled. "Don't," Hannah whined as she squirmed away.

Although her laughter was dying down quickly, it made it hard for Emily to take the girl's complaint seriously. Emily merely grinned widely when her kid dropped the angry glare despite her best efforts to keep up the moody teenager act.

Hannah tried to move on with as much dignity as a teenager could possibly have after that exchange. "I need to go back to my house to get something to wear to the party. I don't have anything here."

"Or we could go shopping," Emily suggested. She needed something to wear if she was going to go out with Andrew on New Year's Eve.

Hannah brightened almost immediately at the prospect of shopping with Emily, her displeasure with her curfew temporarily forgotten. As they planned their shopping trip, mother and daughter debated the merits of the different malls before agreeing on Tyson's Corner.

* * *

Even though they were going shopping and she no longer needed clothes, Hannah still wanted to stop by her house to get the gift cards she received for Christmas. Emily waited in the entryway while the girl ran upstairs to grab her gift cards and anything else she needed.

While she was waiting, her phone started ringing. Emily glanced at the screen of her iPhone and saw that it was Deputy Director of the FBI James Barbour. He wouldn't be calling unless he had a reason to, and, whatever the reason, somehow she didn't think it would be good.

"Prentiss," Emily answered her phone in a crisp, professional tone.

"Agent Prentiss," he said. "This is Deputy Director Barbour."

"Sir," Emily acknowledged respectfully as she racked her brain for what he could be calling about.

"I know the BAU is currently out of rotation. That's not why I'm calling," he started. "The fact of the matter is that the BAU isn't the only unit we have with more people taking time off this time of year than who are actually working. Every female agent in Counterterrorism who's fluent in Arabic is out right now. I'll cut right to the chase. You're fluent in Arabic."

_Shit_. Emily could already tell this was going to cut into her plans with Hannah, but she couldn't exactly say no. It was the Deputy Director. "Yes, sir," Emily confirmed with a defeated sigh.

"Counterterrorism has taken a husband and wife with known ties to an organization on every watchlist out there into custody. We could use your help in the wife's interrogation, Agent Prentiss. She only speaks Arabic, and we think she may respond better to a female agent. You're the only female agent who is fluent Arabic and stayed in the D.C. area for the holidays. Based on the chatter we've picked up, time is of the essence here."

"Sir, I have my daughter with me," Emily said, giving the girl in question an apologetic look as she came down the stairs.

Hannah looked at Emily quizzically but didn't say anything since she could see that the woman was on the phone.

"Another agent can sit with your daughter," Barbour offered, not unkindly. He didn't know how old Emily's daughter was. He wouldn't normally volunteer an FBI agent for babysitting duty, but he really needed Emily's particular skillset. Her language skills, previous experience with an anti-terrorism taskforce, and background in profiling made her the perfect man – or rather woman – for the job. He needed her to come in.

"That won't be necessary," Emily said hastily, knowing her teenager would have an absolute fit if she thought someone was babysitting her. "She'll be okay in my office."

After she disconnected, Emily reluctantly met Hannah's gaze. "I'm so sorry," Emily said sincerely, "but I have to go into work. You can come with me, and we can still go to the mall after," Emily promised.

Instead of the disappointment Emily expected, Hannah looked overly excited about the prospect. "I can come?" Hannah asked with wide eyes.

"Yes," Emily said. "Just to my office though," she tried to warn the girl who seemed more excited than the situation really warranted. "You might want to bring a book or something."

"Because the FBI is so boring?" Hannah said lightly, amusement in her eyes. How did her birth mother _not_ know how cool her job was?

* * *

The Unit Chief of the BAU did a quick sweep of her office to make sure there were no case files or reports sitting out. She didn't want Hannah to think that she didn't trust her, but there were things in her office that no fourteen year old needed to see. Her daughter's obvious interest in her job was bothering her a little.

"Emily Prentiss! What are you doing here?"

Emily recognized Penelope's voice and looked up from her desk in surprise. She didn't think anyone from her team would be there. She took in the other woman's hot pink workout top and multicolored hot pink, bright purple, electric blue, and neon yellow tights and then noticed Tara, who was also wearing workout clothes and was leaning casually against the doorframe. They must have come in to use the gym. Emily knew Tara was a regular at the gym. Penelope wasn't, but there was a newer agent on another team who looked a lot like a younger Derek Morgan, and Penelope had taken to watching him lift weights in the gym whenever she could.

"You should be at home, bonding with-" Penelope's rant was cut off abruptly when she spotted Hannah. "Hannah!"

"Hi," Hannah said dryly.

"Do we have a case?" Tara asked.

"No, _we_ don't," Emily assured them. "I was called in to help Counterterrorism."

"What? But why?" Penelope said with a worried expression. She didn't want Emily mixed up with another Ian Doyle type, even if the man was partially responsible for the creation of her new favorite teenager.

"Because they need someone who speaks Arabic," Emily explained.

"And Emily's like Google Translate. Only more accurate," Hannah quipped.

Tara knew Emily didn't want to be at work, not when she had Hannah. "It's Counterterrorism," she said with an exasperated expression. "Don't they have anyone else who speaks Arabic?"

"Not a female. At least not one who's in town right now," Emily told the other woman.

"Lucky you," Tara said sarcastically, looking at Emily with a sympathetic expression. "We were going down to the gym when we saw the light on in your office." Tara turned to Hannah. "You can come with us. We'll give you the nickel tour."

Emily shot Tara a grateful look. "Go with them," Emily urged her daughter. She put a hand on the girl's shoulder and gave her a gentle push toward Penelope and Tara. "I'll come find you guys when I'm done."

* * *

Almost two hours later Emily found her friends and her daughter in the gym. Penelope was lying spread-eagle on the training mat on the floor and acknowledged Emily with a groan. Tara had Hannah standing in front of a punching bag and was showing the girl the correct way to make a fist. Emily watched her daughter give the punching bag an experimental punch before announcing her presence. "I'd hold off on joining a fight club."

"She's a lover, not a fighter," Penelope spoke up without ever moving from the floor.

Emily made a face at that. She didn't know that she wanted her fourteen year old daughter to be a lover _or_ a fighter.

Hannah turned to Emily with a good-natured, if somewhat sheepish, smile. "I guess I don't have your right hook."

"Are you planning on punching anyone?" Emily asked her child in a slightly amused tone.

"Not anymore. I'll just kick anyone who messes with me in the balls," Hannah told the woman mock seriously.

Emily looked at Hannah with thinly veiled amusement. "How about you tell me if someone messes with you and I'll take care of it?"

"Sure, I'll just ask the rapist or mugger to wait a minute so I can call my mother, the FBI agent," Hannah said sarcastically.

"Where are you going that you think you're going to be fighting off rapists and muggers?" Emily asked her daughter with raised eyebrows. She would be appalled if she didn't know better, but she knew the teenager's normal routine, and it consisted of school, volleyball and home – no place Hannah was likely to be mugged.

"Nowhere," Hannah said, giggling a little at the absurdity of it.

"Uh-huh," Emily murmured, fighting a smile. "Since we know you don't have a knockout punch, does anyone want to tell me what happened to Penelope?"

"Oh." Hannah glanced at Penelope. "Tara broke her."

"I didn't _break_ her," Tara said defensively. "She wanted to work out with me."

"Only because I thought this whole gym thing would be less horrible if I had a workout buddy!" Penelope said earnestly. "But it wasn't. After this experience, I can only conclude that whoever came up with the concept of a gym was a total sadist, and all the exercise machines are torture devices for all the masochists out there."

"Hey, you said you wanted to do whatever I would normally do," Tara reminded her. She had asked the tech analyst what she wanted to do and that was the answer.

Emily bit her bottom lip as she hid a small smile. "Maybe you should try something low intensity like yoga or Pilates. There's a Pilates class at this place by me on Saturday mornings. We could go," Emily suggested tentatively.

"But that's when we hang out," Hannah said a little forlornly.

"Not at 8:00 am we don't. You're asleep when I go to Pilates," Emily assured her kid.

With what looked like enormous effort, Penelope sat up and stared at Emily in disbelief. "A workout class at 8:00 am on a Saturday? No, thank you."

Emily just laughed and helped pull Penelope to her feet.

"Okay, _ow_," Penelope complained loudly, wincing as she stood stiffly.

"You gonna be okay?" Emily asked.

"I'm okay. I just feel like a pinata _after_ a whole party full of six year old boys gets through with it," Penelope replied.

"You broke her," Hannah told Tara.

* * *

It was just over a half hour drive from Quantico to Tyson's Corner Center, and it took Emily another ten minutes of circling to find a parking spot outside the three-story Nordstrom. After a late lunch in Nordstrom café, they wandered through the mall aimlessly.

The mall was still crowded, but it was a lot less crowded than it had been just a week before when everyone was doing last minute Christmas shopping. Now people were there returning gifts they didn't like or that just didn't fit and using gift cards at the after Christmas sales. There were groups of giggling young teenage girls about Hannah's age, hassled looking mothers with younger children who did _not_ want to be in a mall unless they were in a candy store or a toy store, and mothers with their pre-teen or teenage daughters who thought the mall was their oyster.

Shopping had been a go-to activity for Hannah and her adoptive mom, and she missed having a mother to shop with. She always jumped at the chance to go shopping with her aunt and cousins, but her aunt's focus was always on her own kids, Hannah's cousins. It was nice to have Emily's sole focus be on her. They went into any store Hannah showed any interest in, Emily picked out some things for Hannah to try on, Emily waited in the dressing room for Hannah to model everything she took back to the dressing room. If she noticed Hannah looking at anything longingly, Emily grabbed it. It was different from shopping with her aunt and cousins or her friends. It was all about Hannah, and she was relishing it.

Emily lost count of the number of stores they'd been in, but they had bags from Madewell, Altar'd State, and H&M by the time they were done shopping for Hannah. It was fun for the mother to shop for her daughter. It helped that the tall, slender teenager looked good in just about anything. Hannah wanted to know what Emily thought about everything she tried on and was extremely grateful for everything Emily got her. Hannah thanked her profusely, but really Emily was glad to be able to take her daughter shopping.

When there were no other stores Hannah wanted to go in, they detoured to the second floor of Nordstrom where Emily browsed the racks of more formal dresses.

After Emily told the saleswoman who took a dress back to the dressing room for her while she continued looking that she was shopping for New Year's Eve, Hannah looked at her curiously. "What are you doing for New Year's Eve?" It had never even occurred to the teenager that her birth mother might have plans. Her dad never went out.

"I'm going out to dinner," Emily replied casually as she looked for her size in a dress she wanted to try on.

Hannah gave Emily a speculative look. "Like on a date?" She asked, her eyes shining with excitement. For a teenage girl, guys were _always_ a hot topic.

Emily didn't like discussing her love life with anyone, but Hannah wasn't just anyone. If she wanted her daughter to be comfortable talking to her about dating, Emily knew she couldn't act like her own date was something to hide. "Yes, on a date," Emily answered.

It was weird for the girl to think of one of her parents dating, but it would have been even weirder if it were her dad – the parent she actually grew up with and had only ever seen with her adoptive mom. Hannah couldn't imagine her dad with anyone _but_ her mom. She didn't think she would like anyone her dad dated for no other reason than because that woman wouldn't be her mom.

"With who? Do you have a boyfriend?" Hannah asked with an eager expression, wanting to know everything about her birth mother's date.

That was a good question. Emily had only been out with Andrew Mendoza a few times because of cases and work travel. When she was going to see him, Emily always felt the kind of giddy nervous excitement that she only felt when she really liked someone. They'd had sex – not that she was going to tell her young teenage daughter that – and there was chemistry there. She hesitated, her uncertainty about how to answer playing across her face. "I…don't know that I'd call him that. I've only gone out with him a few times," Emily responded, trying to downplay it. She wasn't entirely comfortable having this conversation, but she was trying to give enough information to keep the lines of communication about dating and guys open without giving any more information than she had to.

"Would you tell me if you had a boyfriend?" Hannah questioned uncertainly. Emily was her mother, and it felt like something she should know, but she didn't know if Emily would think it was any of her business. Unlike her dad whose life seemed to the teenager to revolve around her, Emily had a whole life outside of her.

Emily chuckled softly. "Yes. On one condition…_you_ tell _me_ when you have a boyfriend."

The fourteen year old blushed and looked down, avoiding the older woman's eyes. "I will," she murmured her quiet agreement. "But that's not going to happen any time soon."

Emily wanted that to be true, but she knew better. "It may happen sooner than you think," was all she said in response. Whenever it happened, Emily wouldn't be ready for it. She didn't even want to think about her daughter doing with boys what Emily herself was doing with boys at fifteen, but Hannah was almost that age.

"Have you ever seen _10 Things I Hate About You_?" Hannah asked seemingly randomly.

"Yes," Emily replied. "The nineties teen movie version of Shakespeare's _The Taming of The Shrew._ Good movie."

"You know the dad in it? And how he was all 'no dating until you graduate?'" Hannah said, getting to her point. "That's totally my dad."

Emily smirked as her teenager compared the overprotective single father from the movie with her own dad. In the movie and in real life, a hard-and-fast rule like that only made kids resort to sneaking around. Emily would much rather know who her kid was with and what she was doing than have Hannah lying and sneaking around. "But Bianca _did_ date before she graduated," Emily reminded Hannah. "And you will, too. And when you do-"

"I'll tell you," Hannah promised her birth mother dutifully.

Emily decided to leave it at that for now, trusting that Hannah would tell her before her first date, and they could talk more then. While they were talking, Emily found her size in the dress she was looking at. She headed back to the dressing rooms with her daughter following behind her.

Hannah sat down in a chair in the dressing room and waited for Emily to try on the two dresses she found. The first was a three-quarter sleeve black lace cocktail dress. It was very classic and timeless. The second was midnight blue satin slip dress that was extremely flattering on Emily.

"I like that one," Hannah said enthusiastically when Emily stepped out of the dressing room wearing the second dress. "You look really pretty."

Emily's heart melted at the sweet sincerity in her daughter's voice. Hannah could be really sweet when she wanted to be.

* * *

On New Year's Eve Emily and Hannah were both in Emily's bathroom getting ready to go out. After showering in the guest bathroom, Hannah went into Emily's bathroom to ask if she could use her blow dryer. When Emily said she could get ready in there if she wanted to, Hannah brought her flat iron and makeup bag in and took up residence in front of the second sink. They talked as they got ready, with Emily indulging the girl's questions about how she met Andrew, what he looked like, and where they were going to dinner.

Hannah was almost done straightening her hair. It was a cumbersome task that felt like it could take forever with her long, thick hair. "I wish I had your hair," Hannah said as she set the flat iron down on the counter. She was only thinking about how much easier – and faster – it would be to style her hair if it was straight. But as soon as she said it, she got to thinking about who she got her wavy hair from.

"You do. Mine's not that much darker," Emily told her.

"But your hair's straight. Mine's wavy." Hannah glanced at her birth mother a little warily. "Did my father have wavy hair?"

Emily froze for a split second, the hand that was holding the mascara wand pausing in mid-air. Hannah hadn't said one word about Ian Doyle in weeks. Ever since Emily convinced her that personality-wise she was nothing like Doyle, Hannah never brought him up again. Why was Hannah asking this now? Why _now_ when everything was good…when _they_ were good? Hannah wasn't going to like the answer. Emily knew how much her kid hated the idea that she was anything like her father, but that was one physical characteristic the girl definitely couldn't have gotten from her.

As a little boy, Declan had an adorable mop of blonde curls. In the most recent picture Emily had seen of him, his hair wasn't as curly as it used to be, but it wasn't straight either. He was wearing it in a shaggy style that fell about an inch past his chin in blonde waves. Although Ian Doyle had a militaristic buzzcut when Emily knew him, he had said more than once that his young son looked just like him. That was who Hannah got her wavy hair from.

"He had a buzzcut when I knew him," Emily deflected. Every word was true, but she was choosing her words very carefully. She was raised by a career politician. She knew how to bend the truth and twist it to her advantage. She learned from the best. But her skill at deception didn't do anything to alleviate the guilt she felt. This was the closest she had come to lying to her daughter – something she swore she would never do. She didn't want to lie to Hannah, but she also didn't want the girl to have a meltdown over her wavy hair.

"Does your mom or anyone on your side of the family have wavy hair?" Hannah asked with a glimmer of hope in her dark eyes.

"My mother's hair is straight, but she always curls her hair," Emily told the girl as she swiped the mascara wand over her lashes.

"Really? Do you have any pictures of her?" Hannah asked.

Emily didn't have any pictures of her parents on display in her condo. She shook her head. "I'm not very close with my parents," she offered simply by way of explanation.

Hannah stared at Emily in complete disbelief. "You have to have a picture of her somewhere. She's your mom," Hannah said earnestly.

Emily opened her mouth to respond and hesitated slightly. "My mother was always working," Emily started to explain.

"My dad's always working," Hannah said, exaggerating a little.

"Not like my mother he's not," Emily told the girl as she uncapped her lipstick. "Let me put it this way - in a month, you and I have spent more time together than my mother _ever_ spent with me when I was your age. I wasn't the easiest kid. I did things to rebel. It was my way of trying to get her attention, but what it really did was make it so that every time she actually paid attention to me, we were fighting."

"I'm sorry," Hannah said with a sympathetic expression.

Emily offered her daughter a small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Me, too."

"You're not like her," Hannah said, feeling a sudden rush of gratitude that neither of the mothers she'd known had ever acted anything like Emily's mother.

"That's because I use my mother as an example of what _not_ to do," Emily tried to joke.

"So you really don't have any pictures of her?" Hannah asked, still finding that hard to believe.

"Google her," Emily told her daughter. "There has to be a picture of her attending a political summit or fundraiser online."

Hannah grabbed her iPhone from the bathroom counter to do what her birth mother suggested. With the web browser app open, she shot her mother a questioning look. "Ambassador Prentiss?"

"Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss," Emily supplied.

Just as Emily predicted, the search results returned several pictures of the Ambassador. There was one picture of Elizabeth Prentiss and a man. Wondering if the man was Emily's father, Hannah clicked on it and saw that it wasn't actually Emily's father. "Is that – is she with Reagan?" Hannah looked at Emily with astonishment.

Emily glanced at the image on her daughter's phone, unsurprised to see her mother with a former president of the United States. "Yes."

"She doesn't _look_ like a cold-hearted bitch," Hannah observed in a detached manner.

"Hannah!" Emily cried in a tone that was half-disapproving and half-amused as she shot her teenager a look.

"I'm sorry, but it's true," Hannah said unapologetically. "You're the one who told me how awful she was to you."

"She was just…focused on her career," Emily said quietly as she inspected her own reflection in the mirror with a critical eye. When she was happy with her makeup, she turned to Hannah. "Andrew will be here soon. Your friend is picking you up?"

"Yeah," Hannah replied.

"How do you have friends that drive?" Emily wondered. "You're _fourteen_."

"Everyone on my volleyball team is older," Hannah answered.

"Varsity?" Emily guessed.

Hannah nodded. "I'm the only freshman." The girl didn't say this with pride but rather in more of a woe-is-me way.

Although she didn't elaborate, many of the older girls on the team called Hannah 'the freshman' or worse – 'baby freshman.' Try outs were the summer before ninth grade started, and the girl had inadvertently taken the last spot on the Varsity team away from a sophomore whose sister was one of the more popular juniors on the team.

After a sleepover to 'celebrate' the new members of the team that was really a night of hazing, it had been obvious to everyone there that it was the first time Hannah drank alcohol. In one night, the girl who had just barely turned fourteen at the time earned a reputation as a baby that she'd been trying to live down ever since. Once they realized Hannah wasn't going to tell on them for the hazing or anything else, most of the girls on the team got over their initial resentment of having a freshman on the team. A few of them thought of her as an unofficial little sister. They still called her 'baby freshman,' but it was no longer to be mean or snide. However, the popular junior whose sister was relegated to the JV team still treated Hannah with cold resentment that bordered on cruelty sometime.

"You're just that good," Emily said teasingly, a proud grin on her face. "I'd like to go to one of your games and see you in action."

When she first met Emily, Hannah couldn't picture the woman at a high school volleyball game, but now she could actually see it. It was nice that her birth mother wanted to be there for her, but the season was over. "The season just ended," Hannah told Emily. "And I don't know if I'm going to play next year."

"Why not?" Emily questioned, frowning slightly.

Hannah just shrugged, not wanting to tell the older woman how miserable one girl had made the season for her. "I might do cross country instead," she offered in an attempt to distract her birth mother from the subject of volleyball.

Emily accepted the explanation without questioning it. "I would come watch you run cross-country, but I'm not sure if there's anything to watch. Just your back as you run away." With that, Emily went back to the logistics of the evening. "I need regular check ins from you tonight."

Once her dad gave permission, he trusted that Hannah was doing what she said she was going to do and didn't feel the need to check in on her unless she missed her curfew. The teenager looked at her birth mother in surprise, a protest forming instantly. "What? Why?"

"I need you to let me know when you get there and if your plans change at all," Emily explained calmly. She could see that her daughter was about to argue and spoke quickly to try to stop the argument before it started. "Give me a break here, okay, kid? Having a teenager going to a high school party is new to me. It's not going to ruin your night to send me a couple of text messages, but it will ruin mine if I'm worried because I don't know if you've made it to the party in one piece."

"Fine," Hannah muttered grudgingly, unable to argue with that logic.

Emily offered the teenager a small half-smile as thank you for the tiny concession. "I need you back here at 11:30. Call me if you need a ride."

"I have a ride," Hannah told her.

"Well, if your ride decides to drink anything at all, or the cops break up the party and you need a getaway driver-"

"You _are_ like a cop," Hannah interrupted Emily to point out. She knew the woman wasn't _actually_ a cop, but she was an FBI agent, and that seemed like basically the same thing to the young teenager, only more important.

"An FBI agent," Emily corrected her. "And I'm not an FBI agent to you. I'm your mother."

"So you wouldn't arrest me?" Hannah asked lightly. She knew Emily wouldn't arrest her, but she didn't know what Emily _would_ do if she called the woman to pick her up from the party.

She thought she knew exactly how her dad would react and didn't think she would ever call him for a ride even though he always told her she could. She knew her dad wasn't stupid – he knew teenagers drank, but he had no idea that _she_ drank, and Hannah wanted to keep it that way. She didn't think he would understand the peer pressure she faced. How could he? It was different for girls. There wasn't a movie called 'Mean Boys.'

Emily wanted to roll her eyes at the inquiry, even if her daughter wasn't seriously asking her that. "No," she told the girl in a half-exasperated, half-amused tone. "I'm serious. Call me if you need a ride, okay?" The mother looked at her daughter expectantly, eyebrows raised as she waited for explicit agreement.

"Okay," Hannah agreed with no intention of calling Emily. She didn't know how Emily would react if she did, but she was pretty sure the woman would tell her dad about it. While Emily didn't seem to have any illusions about just what kind of party Hannah was going to, the teenager liked to think that her dad was clueless about how hard the kids at her private high school partied. Whether that was true or not, Hannah truly believed it. Her dad was the Captain of the debate team in high school, and the young teenager thought that probably made him a huge nerd. Emily was a lot cooler than her dorky dad and had even said she did things to rebel not even ten minutes ago. Hannah wondered idly if the older woman drank when she was in high school.

"Okay, I'm going to wait for Andrew in the lobby so he doesn't have to try find somewhere to park," Emily said, knowing parking anywhere in Dupont Circle would be difficult that night. She also didn't really want to explain the presence of the teenage daughter Andrew knew nothing about. She knew she would have to tell him about Hannah or he would never understand why she needed to call it an early night on New Year's Eve – a night when couples would normally ring in the New Year together. Instead of kissing him at midnight, she would be at home to make sure her kid made it home safely. She dropped a soft kiss on the top of the girl's head, careful not to smudge her lipstick or mess Hannah's hair up. "I love you. Have fun, but not too much fun."

* * *

Emily didn't know how to tell Andrew about her teenage daughter. Most single parents of teenage children had a lot of practice telling anyone they were seeing romantically about their child, but it was the first time Emily had to tell anyone she was seeing about Hannah. A child seemed like the kind of thing to disclose early on in any relationship in case the other person involved wasn't okay with it. She wondered if Andrew would be upset that she hadn't said anything sooner. Because she was worried about how he would react, Emily delayed telling him until he noticed she was checking her phone non-stop and took the direct approach of asking her about it.

"You've been checking your phone every five minutes. I'm beginning to think you _want_ to get called in on a case. And if you'd rather be chasing a serial killer than having dinner with me, I'm doing something really wrong here," Andrew said, chuckling nervously.

"It's not that," Emily assured him. She took a deep breath and continued nervously. "I have a fourteen year old daughter. She went to a party tonight, and I told her I need regular check ins from her. That's why I'm checking my phone so much."

"Say no more," Andrew said with an understanding smile. He proceeded to show her a picture of a young teenage girl who looked to be about the same age as Hannah on his phone. "This is my daughter, Keely. She's living with her mom in Denver, but if she were here, I'd be doing the same thing."

"Denver? That has to be hard," Emily said sympathetically.

Andrew nodded. "It is. It's new for me…her being there, me being here. My ex-wife just moved out there for a new job."

"What are you going to do?" Emily asked him. She thought she already knew what he was going to do. He wasn't the type of man to shirk his parental duties.

"The only thing I can do is request a transfer to the Denver field office," Andrew said. "But it could be a while before a Unit Chief position opens up."

Emily sat back a little in her chair and stared at him as the realization sank in that there was a clock ticking on their time together. "What are we doing?" Emily questioned.

"I don't know about you, but I'm getting to know a beautiful, intelligent woman and loving every minute of it," Andrew replied easily, charming as ever.

Emily was flattered, but she didn't want to get more invested than she already was. "You're going to move to Denver when your transfer goes through. That's where your daughter is. My job and my daughter are here," Emily laid out the facts. "I like you. I really do. But this is never going to work."

Andrew wished he could say he was surprised, but he wasn't. The entire time he'd known her it felt like Emily Prentiss had one foot out the door, ready to run.

**A/N:** I know, I know…I lied about Hotch again. He will be in the beginning of the next chapter. This one was just getting too long. I didn't have the part with Penelope and Tara planned, but it just sort of happened. Thanks again for reading. Please let me know what you think.


	25. Chapter 25

**A/N:** Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed. Fair warning - this is a really, really long chapter.

**Chapter 24**

Dinner with Andrew was bittersweet. The food and the company were good. It just sucked that she finally found a good guy, and he was moving to the other side of the country.

Dinner ended with a minor argument about the check. Emily wanted to split it since they were ending dinner as friends, nothing more. Andrew said he asked her out, and nothing about how things were ending changed that.

"Emily." Andrew turned to face her as he idled in front of her building. He was going to give this one last shot. He really thought they had something, and he wasn't going to walk away from it without knowing he'd done everything he could to try to make it work. "Look, I know my ex and my daughter moving to Denver makes all of this a lot more complicated, but I don't know how long it'll be before my transfer goes through. I'm still here, and I could be for a while. All I know is that I want to spend as much time as I can with you while I still can."

Emily looked at him with regret, and he knew her answer. "We haven't known each other that long. If it's this hard to end things now…" Emily's voice trailed off as she struggled to remain logical and levelheaded when her heart and her head were saying different things. She took a deep breath, and, ignoring her second thoughts completely, continued, "The longer we wait, the harder it will be. However long you're here, it will only be a matter of time before you leave. Please don't make this any harder than it already is."

Andrew didn't like her answer, but he accepted it as graciously as he could. "I can't say I'm not disappointed, but I get it," he told her honestly. "So I guess this is it then…?"

Emily nodded. Her eyes were sad, but she managed a thin half-smile. "Thank you for dinner."

Emily's night didn't get any better as it went on. After changing into a black hooded sweatshirt and jeans, she spent the rest of the night on the couch, watching the concerts in Times Square on the New Year's Eve special as she waited anxiously for her teenager to call, text, or – better yet – walk through the door.

Outside of a single text message informing her that Hannah was at the party, the girl was incommunicado. One text message didn't exactly constitute the regular check ins Emily wanted, but she only told Hannah that she needed to know she made it to the party okay and if her plans changed at all. Assuming Hannah stayed at the party, she hadn't actually done anything wrong. At least not yet.

The text message Emily sent at 11:00 pm to ask if Hannah needed a ride went unanswered. Emily knew Hannah could be on her way already. If she was in a car full of kids with the radio blaring, Hannah might not have heard her phone. But her 11:30 curfew came and went with no Hannah.

Emily decided she wasn't even going to say anything as long as Hannah got there soon. Ten – fifteen minutes even - wasn't really late. That could just be from traffic. Emily didn't know where the party was or what part of town Hannah was coming from.

Steve was the one to ask the girl all the basic Parenting 101 questions about the party. At the time, it seemed like it made sense for him to be the one to ask those questions. He wouldn't say yes without having that information. And, he actually knew the kids Hannah hung out with. Emily wouldn't have known anything about the kid who was having the party, even if she got a name from Hannah - which, in hindsight, she should have. Emily knew it was a rookie parenting move to let her teenager leave without having all the information.

To be fair, Emily did ask Hannah some questions of her own, but she backed off when Hannah pointed out with a bit of an attitude that she already told her dad everything. Hannah wasn't used to answering to two parents anymore. It had been a few years since she'd had to do that, and it showed in her response to Emily.

It got closer and closer to midnight, and a phone call _and_ another two text messages (one asking where Hannah was and another telling Hannah to call her) went unanswered. Emily was starting to panic. It had been almost an hour since her first text message asking if Hannah needed a ride. The girl's iPhone was normally attached to her hand like an extra appendage. Why wasn't she answering?

Hannah wasn't just a little late anymore. Logically the mother knew her fourteen year old probably just lost track of time as teenagers tended to do, but the FBI profiler in her couldn't help thinking about all of the teenagers from past BAU cases whose parents probably thought the same thing when, in reality, their kids were missing. Thoughts of what happened to those kids only exacerbated Emily's worry and fear.

The not knowing was the worst. If she knew Hannah was on her way or even that Hannah lost track of time and had just realized what time it was, Emily would be able to relax somewhat. But the only thing she knew for sure was that it had been _hours_ since she had heard anything from her daughter. This right here was why she needed regular check ins.

Emily tried calling her daughter again, but it just rang endlessly before going to voicemail. At least Hannah wasn't sending her straight to voicemail. That was something. There was still a possibility Hannah couldn't hear her phone and wasn't just ignoring Emily's attempts to locate her. Emily left a voicemail, telling Hannah to call her.

How worried should Emily be? She didn't know if this was normal behavior for her teenager. Was Hannah always home by curfew or was she habitually late?

Emily wondered if she should call Steve, but what if he thought Emily couldn't handle the teenager because of this?

There was no way Hannah didn't know what time it was when the clock struck midnight. The kids must have done something to celebrate the New Year, even if it was just a countdown.

"Come on, Hannah. Answer the damn phone," Emily muttered as she dialed her daughter again. But, like every time before that, Hannah didn't answer.

The sound alerting her to a new text message pulled Emily from her internal debate about what she should do. Her first thought was that Hannah had finally texted her back. She scrambled to unlock her iPhone, only to realize the text message wasn't from Hannah.

* * *

It was the first year since Haley died that Aaron Hotchner was home on New Year's Eve and didn't have his son home with him. Sometime in the last few years, he and Jack started a tradition of making root beer floats for a midnight toast and watching the ball drop. At the time, drinking anything with beer in the name with his dad made his then eleven year old son feel like a man. This was the first year his son broke with tradition and elected to spend the night playing video games with the other two freshmen on his soccer team instead of at home with Hotch. Jack was growing up.

Without his son to keep him company, Hotch was relegated to spending the night alone. He didn't begrudge his teenager this time with his friends, but it made him reevaluate his own social life, or lack thereof.

After so many years where he was away for work more than he was home, Hotch fully embraced his retirement and threw himself into being a stay-at-home dad. Aaron Hotchner never did anything halfway. His relationship with his son was the best it had ever been. Jack no longer questioned whether Hotch would be there for his soccer games – he expected Hotch to be there and looked for him in the stands. Any resentment his son may have felt over leaving their lives in D.C. behind to join the Witness Protection Program had faded as they rebuilt their lives in D.C. Hotch felt like he was finally able to provide Jack with the stability that he deserved.

When they returned from Witness Protection, Hotch was successful at pushing his friends from the BAU – his team – away. It was a conscientious decision to leave that part of his life in the past. He only maintained his friendship with Rossi, and now he and Emily had picked their friendship right back up where they left off.

Hotch had few people in his life he would consider close friends. Suffice it to say, he didn't receive any invitations to New Year's Eve parties. He did, however, receive Happy New Year's text messages from Rossi, a few old friends from law school, Jessica, and Sean.

Sean's text came in a little after midnight and had enough typos in it for Hotch to conclude that his younger brother was drunk. It bothered him more than it should have. Sean was hardly the only single thirty-something in New York who was overserved on New Year's Eve. He wanted to believe that his reaction was partially due to their dad's history of alcoholism and partially due to Sean's long history of making bad decisions, but, rather than concern for his brother, what he was actually feeling was envy.

If he knew Sean as well as he thought he did, his brother would find someone to take home with him. It didn't sit well with Hotch that his perpetually irresponsible brother would find someone to share the evening while he would be spending another night alone.

It didn't matter how irrational his jealousy was – and it was irrational. Even Hotch knew that. But that was still exactly how he felt as he compared his own lonely New Year's Eve with his brother's. It wasn't that he wanted to have a meaningless one-night stand. He didn't want that. What he wanted was to have someone to spend 2019 and every year after that with. He wanted a relationship. He wanted love and trust and commitment. The only problem was that he didn't want all of that with just anyone. Ever since he got it into his head that he wanted Emily Prentiss, none of the women he came across who were actually available seemed to measure up to her.

Emily was probably ringing in the New Year with another man. Would Emily and the agent she was seeing have stayed in for a quiet night at home or would they have gone out? Thinking about what she could be doing at that very moment did nothing to curb the bitter jealousy he was already feeling.

The truth was he'd been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about Emily. Ever since he realized he had feelings for her that went beyond friendship, he just couldn't stop thinking about her. The more he thought about it, the more he thought they could be really good together. They understood each other on a level Hotch wasn't sure anyone else could ever understand him. It wasn't just that, as profilers, Emily knew how he thought, and he knew how she thought. It was more than that. They thought very similarly. They even had similar values. In so many ways they were a lot alike. It stood to reason that they would be compatible. He didn't know why he never saw it before.

Before he lost his nerve, Hotch opened a new text message and found Emily in his contacts. He hesitated for a very brief moment before typing a Happy New Year's text message to her. It was innocent enough. They were friends, weren't they? Without overthinking it, he pressed send.

Emily's response was almost instantaneous, leading him to believe that maybe she wasn't with the agent she was seeing. She could be working. Hotch knew that, of course, but maybe there was more to it than that.

Hotch could see that Emily was typing something else, something more than the standard Happy New Year text she already sent in response. He waited, practically on the edge of his seat until the text came through.

"Can you talk?" Another text came through immediately following her question. "Only if you're not busy."

His lips curved at that. It was typical of Emily. She wouldn't want to intrude on the plans he didn't have, but it wasn't an intrusion. And, even if it was, coming from her, it would be welcome. Instead of replying to her via text, he called her.

Emily answered on the first ring. "Hey. I'm sorry to bother you."

"You're not bothering me. If you remember correctly, _I_ texted _you_," Hotch reminded her, his voice gently teasing.

"Yeah, to tell me Happy New Year. But happy isn't exactly the word I would use to describe my evening," Emily told him in a wry tone. "It's gone from bad to worse."

"Is something wrong?" Hotch asked with genuine concern.

"Yes. Maybe. I don't know," Emily said, getting flustered as she wondered if she was blowing this whole thing out of proportion. Just because her kid was forty-five minutes late didn't mean something terrible had happened to her. "It's a long story, but I have Hannah staying with me this week," Emily started to explain. "She, uh, went to a party tonight – well, last night now. Her curfew was 11:30, and she's _still_ not here. I've tried calling her, but she's not answering her phone."

Hotch was listening, but he was also wondering why Emily was alone on New Year's Eve. If Hannah was staying with her, Emily had to be in D.C. Maybe things with the agent she was seeing weren't serious enough for him to meet her daughter.

"I'm freaking out," Emily continued to ramble on in a nervous manner. "You're the only one I know who has a kid the same age. Please tell me this is normal. Teenagers do this. Right? But how late is too late? I mean, when should I really be worried?" She posed her questions to Hotch in quick succession. He had a teenager. He would know all of this.

"It sounds to me like you already are," Hotch told her.

"I am," Emily admitted. "But should I be?"

"I know I would be if Jack was almost an hour late," Hotch said. "But Jack isn't Hannah. When we were in the Program, there was this one time when he didn't come home right after school. It was right after we moved. The soccer coach saw him play during gym class and asked him to join the team even though it was halfway through the season. Jack didn't call me because he thought I'd say no, but he went to practice after school anyway. By the time he finally came home an hour and a half later, the Marshals were there. I was convinced Scratch had him. After that, well…let's just say he knows to call me if he's going to be late."

"I bet he does," Emily said with wide eyes.

"Yeah, well, I have a feeling that Hannah won't make the same mistake twice," Hotch told her. As soon as she knew for sure that her daughter was okay, Emily's worry would turn into anger. He wouldn't want to be Hannah when that happened.

"I don't know. I won't have the U.S. Marshals here to greet her at the door," Emily replied wryly. She hesitated as she felt her uncertainty more acutely than before. Hotch knew to be worried if Jack was almost an hour late because he knew his son. Emily didn't know how worried she should be because she didn't know if this was out of character for Hannah. Steve would be able to tell her, but she really didn't want to call the adoptive father unless she absolutely had to. "What do I do?" Emily asked Hotch a little desperately.

"What's your gut telling you?" Hotch questioned. He trusted Emily's gut. If she thought something was wrong, it usually was. He couldn't tell if she really thought that now or if this was more a combination of her being brand new to parenting a teenager _and_ needing to learn how to separate the BAU cases involving kids from her dealings with her own daughter – one of the hardest things for any agent to do, even one with Emily Prentiss' compartmentalization skills. When they saw what they saw, agents had a tendency to think the worst any time they didn't know where their own children were. It was a curse of the job. As a rule, anyone who routinely saw dead kids was overprotective of their own kid.

"She wanted to stay out later," Emily told him as she remembered her daughter negotiating her curfew with Steve. "She said everyone would be out until midnight. Her dad compromised and extended her curfew to 11:30, but that wasn't late enough for her. I have a feeling she chose to ignore her curfew because her dad's not here to enforce it." Emily had to consider that this may have been Hannah's plan all along.

"You think she's testing you," Hotch concluded.

"But what if I'm wrong and something happened to her?" Emily questioned anxiously, unable to get that thought out of her head.

"What do you want to do?" Hotch asked her patiently. He knew she wouldn't stop worrying until her daughter was home safe.

"I want to ask Penelope to track her phone," Emily answered immediately. "Is that bad?" She faltered a little, showing her insecurity. She was still pretty new to parenting a teenager and honestly didn't know what to do. She had found missing kids, including her own, before. That was nothing new for her. But Hannah wasn't really missing this time. Hannah was just late. Was it overkill to use her FBI tricks to find a kid who was, in all likeliness, off having a great time at a party? Or was the nagging fear that Hannah _wasn't_ still at the party reason enough to hunt her down?

"You know, they have apps for that. For all those parents who don't have an FBI tech analyst on their speed dial," Hotch told her, his lips twitching into a slight smirk.

"It's good to know I'm not the only parent stalking my kid," Emily replied dryly.

"I'll let you go call Garcia," Hotch said reluctantly. He wasn't ready for the conversation to end, but he knew he had to let her go. She needed to find her daughter. "Let me know if there are any issues?" He added without really thinking about it. He didn't think there would be, but he wanted to know if there was a problem. He liked that she kept coming to him with her problems. It made him feel needed. It had been a long time since he felt needed by anyone besides Jack.

"You haven't had enough of me and my issues for one night?" Emily said in a self-deprecating tone. She was more kidding than anything, but it was a legitimate concern for her. She didn't actually plan to call him about her missing-in-action kid, but she was in total panic mode when his text came through. As soon as she saw who was texting her, it made sense to call him. Aaron Hotchner was the only person she knew who had a kid the same age as Hannah. Now, however, she was embarrassed that she interrupted his New Year's Eve over something like this – something she should have been able to handle on her own.

Emily hated asking anyone for help. She didn't want anyone to think she _needed_ help, especially not Hotch. His opinion was important to her, and she didn't want him to think she was incapable. She had always wanted him to see her as strong and capable. She had to swallow her pride when she went to him for legal advice before approaching Steve and then again when Steve proposed the idea of a set visitation schedule, but this wasn't even legal advice. Now she was going to him for parenting advice, too. He always gave good advice, but she needed to stop asking for his advice all the time.

"You can call me any time, Emily," Hotch told her, and Emily could hear the sincerity in his voice. "You know that."

"I do. And I have been," Emily said ruefully. "I hope I didn't take you away from anything – or anyone – tonight. I know it's New Year's Eve," Emily finished on an apologetic note, knowing he probably didn't expect this when he texted her. New Year's Eve was a big date night. Realizing she didn't even ask if he had plans, Emily winced slightly.

"You didn't," Hotch assured her. He hesitated slightly before deciding to go ahead and ask what he really wanted to know. She opened the door for it. "I didn't have any exciting plans. I'm surprised you didn't have plans though," he said, trying to sound casual. "I thought you were seeing someone?"

"I was, but he's moving to Denver, and he picked tonight to tell me. It's been a really great New Year's," Emily said sarcastically.

"I'm sorry," Hotch offered halfheartedly as he processed that information and what it meant for him and his chances with Emily.

"No, you're not," Emily said knowingly. She may not know the real reason why he was so opposed to her relationship with Andrew, but she knew he was. "You didn't think it was a good idea for me to be dating another agent."

"That may be true, but I never wanted you to get hurt," Hotch told her with far more sincerity.

"We were only seeing each other for about a month now. It's not like it was some big love affair," Emily said, trying to downplay it.

Hotch knew it wasn't the time to tell Emily he had feelings for her, but, with her schedule, it could be another month before he saw her unless he did something. "Do you want to grab dinner sometime this week?" He asked suddenly. "I'm guessing you could use a drink after the night you've had." He tried to keep his tone light and friendly.

"Or two or three," Emily said in a dry tone.

After comparing schedules and identifying a night that should work assuming the BAU didn't have a case, they hung up.

* * *

By the time she hung up with Hotch, her kid was an hour late and still had yet to respond to any of her texts or call her back.

"If you don't call me in the next 5 minutes, Penelope's going to track your phone."

Emily sent that text message to her daughter and waited. She wasn't bluffing. She really would ask Penelope to track Hannah's phone if she had to, but just the threat of her doing that might be enough.

It only took a minute for Hannah to realize she had yet another new text message from her birth mother. Emily had been blowing up her phone all night, and Hannah was ignoring her texts and calls. The teenager knew she was late and had already decided it was worth being grounded when her dad got back - and that was only _if_ Emily told her dad. She knew Emily probably would tell her dad, but Hannah thought she might be able to talk her out of it. In any case, Hannah thought it was worth the risk.

With no real intention of responding to it, Hannah gave the latest text message from her birth mother a cursory glance, expecting another message along the same lines as the ones before it – "Call me" or "Where are you?" When she saw what it really said, her eyes bugged out. It was one text message she couldn't ignore.

The teenager wasted no time telling the friend she was talking to that she'd be back and weaving her way through the crowded house toward the front door. Once outside Hannah walked past two juniors who were outside vaping and stopped on the sidewalk in front of the house. From where she was standing, she could still hear the music coming from the house but just barely. It was only then that she called her birth mother.

Emily smirked slightly when she saw the incoming call almost exactly five minutes after sending her last text. She just wished she would have thought to make that threat earlier. Then she wouldn't have spent the last hour and a half worrying. "Oh, so your phone _is_ working," was the first thing Emily said when she answered. "I wasn't sure since you didn't answer any of my texts or calls."

"I'm sorry. I couldn't hear my phone," Hannah gave the first excuse she could think of. While it was true that she couldn't hear her phone over the music and all of the loud, drunk teenagers at the party, she'd had it out for most of the night and saw it light up with notifications each and every time Emily texted or called.

With how quickly Hannah responded to the threat, Emily wasn't buying that excuse for one second. "Funny, you sure called me awfully fast for someone who couldn't hear her phone," Emily said. "Where the hell are you?" Emily barely raised her voice, but she had never once raised her voice to Hannah before so it was enough to get her kid's attention.

Hannah was shocked. Since when did Emily _yell_ at her? Sure, Emily had been displeased with her before, but she never really got mad. "I'm still at the party," Hannah admitted reluctantly. Something told her she didn't want to make Emily any more upset than she already was.

"Where is the party?" Emily asked her kid. "Give me the address. I'm coming to get you."

"You don't have to come get me," Hannah said quickly. She knew she wasn't talking to Emily, her friend. She was talking to Emily, her mother – and not the cool mom she had envisioned her being. It was like Emily had suddenly turned into the stereotypical angry parent overnight, and the teenager didn't relish the idea of being picked up from the party by an angry parent. "I'm leaving now," she told her birth mother.

"Address. _Now._" Emily spoke in the same firm, no-nonsense tone she would use when issuing a direct order in her role as Unit Chief. It was a tone she very rarely had to use with her team, but when she did, it reminded them that she was in charge, and, whether they liked her orders or not, they did have to follow them. It was more common for her to use that tone on uncooperative unsubs when telling them to back away from a victim or drop their weapon. Whenever she used it, Emily was done negotiating. She was not negotiating with Hannah on this. Her fourteen year old kid was not the one who was in control here. Emily wasn't letting Hannah hang up until she knew exactly where the girl was. And even then, she was done sitting around waiting for her to show up. She was going to get her daughter.

Wearing an unpleasantly surprised expression, the teenager unconsciously responded to the authority the woman was exuding, even just over the phone, and gave her the address in a meek voice.

"Wait there. Do not leave," Emily told her errant child very clearly. "Do you understand?"

"Yes," Hannah answered grudgingly. She definitely didn't appreciate Emily talking to her like a naughty little kid. Little did she know, that was exactly what she was in her birth mother's eyes, at least at that particular moment. It was not how the teenager ever wanted to be seen by anyone, especially not the sophisticated older woman she was so impressed by.

Emily pulled up to the house seventeen minutes later. It was a nice house in a wealthy area. The houses were far enough apart that none of the neighbors had called to complain about the noise from the party.

Hannah was waiting for her outside. If anyone were to ask Emily, it was the first smart thing Hannah did all night.

The teenager slid into the passenger seat almost the second the car came to a complete stop. She didn't want to risk her birth mother getting out of the car and making a scene that would embarrass her. As she sat there with Emily staring her down from the driver's seat, Hannah lost all of her teenage arrogance. Emily just continued to stare, never blinking once, as her kid shifted uncomfortably under her gaze, clearly unnerved. After the night she had, Emily didn't even feel bad about making her fourteen year old sweat.

In the front seat of the sedan with only the center console separating them, Emily noticed the smell of cheap beer coming from her teenager almost immediately. It was faint, but it was definitely there. Even so Hannah didn't seem drunk to her. The girl didn't stumble getting into the car and didn't fumble with the seatbelt when she buckled it. Earlier when they were on the phone, the girl's speech was normal. She didn't talk loudly or giggle for no apparent reason, and there were no slurred words. Once she got Hannah talking, Emily would see if she could smell alcohol on her breath or if the smell was just on her clothes from being at a party. Emily was sure she would see obvious signs of it if Hannah had, in fact, been drinking. In the meantime, they had other things to deal with.

When her nervous kid didn't seem to be in any rush to explain herself, Emily decided to start. "I told you I needed you back at 11:30."

Hannah knew what Emily said, but Emily was just the messenger. She knew the woman wasn't the one to blame for the early curfew. That was all her dad. She thought for sure Emily would have been more reasonable than he was.

It was easy for the teenager to see the birth mother who didn't make the rules as the cool parent, and the dad who made all the rules and decided her punishments when she broke them as the bad guy. Emily didn't think she was too young to date. Emily didn't reprimand her for her language when she swore in front of her. Emily took her shopping and watched movies with her all day.

"Only because my dad said I had to be back then! _He's_ the one who wouldn't let me stay out later," Hannah said, trying to make her dad out to be the bad guy instead of taking responsibility for her actions. "I mean, who goes home at 11:30 on _New Year's Eve_?" She asked as if the very idea was ridiculous. And then, in a strategy employed by manipulative teenagers everywhere, she tried to get the less strict of her two parents on her side in this. She gave Emily an imploring look, the big doe eyes she inherited from the woman pleading for understanding. "I thought you'd be cool. You usually are."

The teenager thought that was a compliment, but Emily didn't take it as one. She understood the underlying implication that Hannah didn't think she was so cool anymore now that she was upholding the curfew Steve imposed. If that was really her daughter's best attempt at sweet-talking her, it was pretty pathetic.

Hannah was living in a fantasy world if she thought Emily was going to let her stay out all night. Emily wondered when she ever gave her delusional kid the idea that she would be even remotely okay with that.

"Really?" Emily questioned with heavy skepticism. She looked at her fourteen year old in complete disbelief. "You really thought I'd be _cool_ with you partying all night?"

It sounded pretty dumb when Emily put it like that. "Kind of. At the time," Hannah replied weakly, averting her eyes when she realized she wasn't helping her case any. If she were being honest, Hannah knew Emily wouldn't be completely cool with it. And, if she didn't know before, all of the text messages and phone calls were a pretty good clue. She just didn't think Emily would actually _do_ anything about it.

Taking in the girl's sheepish expression, Emily shook her head and gave her daughter a look that was rather pointed. "I don't think that's true. I think you knew I wouldn't be okay with it and did it anyway."

As she put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb, Emily waited for Hannah to say something else. She thought her daughter owed her an explanation - and thinking she would be cool with it was _not_ an explanation.

"I didn't think you'd freak out and have Penelope track my phone," Hannah muttered in response.

"Well, maybe I wouldn't have freaked out if you had checked in with me. The last time I heard from you was at 9:30," Emily said reproachfully. "How many times did I call you?" When Hannah didn't answer her, Emily repeated the question a little more sternly. "How many times, Hannah?"

If Emily was going to ask her questions, Hannah couldn't tune out the lecture like she would if it were her dad. He usually talked while the teenager only half-listened, mainly just waiting for her punishment. Emily was forcing her to be an active participant in the conversation.

"I don't know," Hannah said with a wary look at her birth mother, whose gaze was on the road. "I lost count." That last part was mumbled under her breath. Emily wasn't supposed to hear it, but, unfortunately for Hannah, she did.

Emily couldn't believe Hannah actually had the unbelievable gall to be annoyed by the number of phone calls that went unanswered. "I called you so many times you lost count," she repeated back to her wayward daughter with angry incredulity, using the girl's own words against her. "You were more than an hour late by the time you finally called me back," she told the irresponsible teenager. "Do you have any idea how worried I've been?"

"No," Hannah said in a small voice. She didn't mean to worry her birth mother. She didn't think Emily would worry like she knew her dad would have if he'd been there. Over the last several days, Hannah had started to see Emily as more and more of a mom, but she still never would have put her birth mother in the same category of parent as her dad. She didn't think the cool older woman who had admitted to being a rebellious teenager herself would make such a big deal out of this.

"Pretty worried," Emily told her. "Your curfew was 11:30, and it's almost one now," the mother reiterated to her child. "There was over an hour tonight where you were completely unaccounted for."

"You knew where I was," Hannah protested, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at what she thought was a huge overreaction. Emily knew she was at the party. Why was the woman acting like she could have died or something? It was just a party.

"No, I didn't," Emily told her teenager in an exasperated tone. "For all I knew, you were on your way and you were in a car accident." She elected not to bring up any of the other possible scenarios that went through her mind because of the things she'd seen as an agent. She knew they would seem crazy to her fourteen year old - and maybe they were crazy, but they were very real possibilities to her. How did she make a kid who thought nothing bad could ever happen to her understand why she was so upset about what Hannah clearly thought was a minor infraction? Emily opened her mouth and then closed it again, reconsidering her next words before speaking in a very heartfelt manner. "Not knowing where you are or if you're okay has got to be the worst feeling in the world."

Hannah realized in that moment that her birth mother's feelings were no less real than her dad's, her worry no less than that of any other concerned parent. With that realization, Hannah felt a sharp tug of conscience followed by the beginning twinge of guilt.

As annoying at it could be at times, the fourteen year old knew her dad only worried because he loved her. Hannah knew Emily had said she loved her before, but how could someone who had only known her a little over a month possibly love her as much as her dad did?

Guilt gnawing at her stomach, Hannah offered her birth mother a sincere apology for the first time since that night. "Emily…I'm sorry," she said in a soft, contrite voice.

Emily stopped at a red light and took the opportunity to turn her head to the right and study her daughter quietly for a moment. When she decided the girl's remorse was genuine, her expression softened a little. "Would you have done this if your dad were here?" Emily asked the girl.

"I don't know. Maybe. I really didn't want to be the only one who left early," Hannah answered honestly. "But last time I was out this late, my dad called the FBI," Hannah added with a tentative smile, rolling her eyes in a playful manner. She held her breath as she waited to see how Emily would respond, hoping the woman would laugh or smile or _something_ that would tell her she was forgiven.

Emily knew that by the FBI, Hannah meant her. She shot her cheeky kid a somewhat amused look. "Too bad missing curfew isn't a federal offense. I wonder what would be more embarrassing…being picked up by the FBI or your mother party crashing?" Emily mused, suppressing a smirk at the completely horrified look that came over her teenager's face. "Because if you do it again, I _will_ track you down, and I promise you it won't be as an agent," Emily warned her daughter in a foreboding tone.

"I won't," the wide-eyed teenager assured her. Hannah would never live it down if her mother showed up at a party to drag her home. How did she ever think Emily was cool?

"You won't what? Miss curfew or ignore my calls?" Emily questioned with raised eyebrows and an unreadable expression. She needed Hannah to really understand what she'd done wrong, not just feel bad for worrying her. Realizing belatedly that the light was green when the Lyft driver behind her honked, Emily reluctantly turned her attention back to the road.

"I won't ignore your calls, but I probably will miss curfew again," was the teenager's response. At least she was being realistic. "Just not if I'm at your house," she added wryly. She would take being grounded by her dad any day over her mother making a big scene and embarrassing her in front of everyone at a party. She didn't know if Emily would really do that, but she wasn't about to find out.

Emily stifled a small smile at her daughter talking like she would stay with her again. She was also feeling a little smug about the healthy fear the girl seemed to have developed of breaking the rules when Emily was in charge. "You do have to follow the rules when you're with me," Emily told her daughter. "And on that note, I have to ask – were you drinking tonight? Because you kind of smell like it." Hannah's breath didn't actually smell like stale beer, but it did smell minty fresh, which made Emily wonder if her teenager tried to cover the smell of alcohol with gum or breath mints. That was the only thing that made her think Hannah might have been drinking. The fourteen year old wasn't acting like she was drunk.

Hannah's internal alarm flared at the question. "That's because someone spilled on me!" She cried defensively. She wasn't lying – another girl had spilled beer on her when a group of girls, including Hannah, were dancing on the makeshift dance floor in the living room. She wasn't telling Emily everything though. She did have one beer at the beginning of the night to keep up appearances and then caved to peer pressure and did one shot of Smirnoff at midnight, but with how angry Emily was already, Hannah wasn't about to tell her that. She wasn't _that_ stupid.

Luckily for Hannah, Emily believed the half-truth. Maybe it was because the teenager didn't actually lie or maybe it was because she was acting normally. Whatever the reason, Hannah really lucked out when her mother, the seasoned profiler, moved on without any further questions. Emily would have to be sure Hannah had been drinking before she would take it any further, and she wasn't sure.

"Okay." Emily took a deep breath and tried to prepare herself mentally for a very unhappy teenager. She glanced at Hannah, her eyes a little wary. "You know I can't let this slide."

Understanding that her birth mother wasn't letting her off with just a warning, the young teenager's shoulders slumped. She originally thought all Emily would ever do was tell her dad, but now she wasn't so sure. "Are you going to tell my dad?" She asked apprehensively. She didn't know what would be worse at this point – having another parent be angry and disappointed or whatever Emily would do to her.

It wasn't lost on Emily that Hannah seemed to automatically assume her dad would be the one to determine her punishment. Emily had briefly considered taking the girl's phone from her. It seemed like a logical consequence for not answering any of her texts or calls - if she wasn't going to answer her phone, maybe she didn't need it. In the end, Emily decided against it. She wasn't sure it was really her place and didn't know how much of a lesson losing her phone for the rest of the day would really teach anyway (Hannah went back home in less than twenty-four hours so Emily wouldn't have been able to keep her phone any longer than that).

Emily still didn't want to tell Steve about this for her own selfish reasons, but she knew it was better that the adoptive father hear it from her rather than find out another way. When it came to rule-breaking, her kid was a dumb teenager, not a criminal mastermind. The girl could easily slip up and say something to him about her late-night activities. The father could be monitoring his fourteen year old daughter's social media accounts and stumble across a picture or a comment. There were too many variables that Emily couldn't control. Emily knew it would be bad if she didn't tell him and he found out some other way.

Hell, if the situation were reversed and her daughter was really hers, Emily would be _pissed_ if anything like this happened and she wasn't told. By not giving the full-time parent the opportunity to deal with this behavior, Emily would be letting Hannah get away with it. If that happened, Hannah would be more likely to repeat it.

"I have to," Emily said with an apologetic glance at the girl. She didn't want her daughter to hate her for telling on her.

The girl's face fell, but she merely nodded in a resigned manner.

The easy acceptance surprised Emily more than pleading or arguing would have. She didn't know why, but she felt the need to justify herself to the fourteen year old. "Just because your dad's not here doesn't mean the usual rules don't apply. The only way to make that clear is for you to face the same punishment you would have if he were here. And, besides, your dad gets back today so I don't have enough time to really make you suffer." Emily tried to end on a lighter note, teasing the girl a little.

Hannah didn't crack even a small smile.

The teenager's expression had closed off completely, and Emily couldn't tell what she was thinking or feeling. Was the fourteen year old just unhappy and pouting as a normal, albeit childish, reaction to being in trouble? Or was she actually mad at Emily now?

It was neither of those things.

The rest of the drive was silent. When they got back to Emily's, Hannah disappeared into the guest room almost immediately without even saying goodnight – a first since she'd been at Emily's. Emily's heart sank at the cold, distant behavior.

After changing into her pajamas, Emily went to try to talk to Hannah again. The door to the guest bathroom was closed, and Emily could see the light creeping out from under the closed door and hear water running. Hannah must be brushing her teeth and washing her face. Emily went into the guest room to wait for her and sat down on the edge of the unmade bed.

While she waited, Emily looked around, taking in the pile of dirty clothes on the floor, the cosmetics littering the top of the dresser, and the paperback on the nightstand (_The Nightingale_) – all signs that her teenager had made herself at home while she was there. It took a day or two for Hannah to go from trying to be a perfectly polite houseguest to being the normal unruly teenager that she truly was. If anything good were to be said about that night, it was that Hannah was definitely comfortable enough to be that normal unruly teenager now.

Hannah hesitated in the doorway when she saw Emily sitting on the bed. "What are you doing in here?" Hannah asked, her voice coming out harsher than she intended it to.

Taken aback by the harshness in her daughter's voice, Emily frowned slightly. "I…just came in to say goodnight."

"Goodnight," Hannah mumbled half-heartedly as she moved past Emily without ever looking at her.

"Oh, is that how it's gonna be now?" Emily said with raised eyebrows. Unimpressed with the sulky behavior, she tilted her head to the side and gave the sullen teenager a reproachful look. "Don't tell me you're mad at me."

"I'm not," Hannah said honestly.

"You know you deserve whatever punishment your dad is going to give you," Emily told her.

"I know!" Hannah cried unhappily. Hadn't they already had this conversation? Did they really have to do it again?

"Then why are you acting like this?" Emily asked her.

"Like _what_?" Hannah demanded in an exasperated tone, unwilling to admit she was acting badly even though she knew she wasn't being very fair to Emily.

"Giving me the cold shoulder," Emily said. "I mean, is it just me or is it below zero in here right now?"

"It's just you," Hannah told her birth mother with a roll of her eyes.

"Oh, yeah? You want to try that goodnight again and actually look at me this time?" Emily challenged lightly. "A hug would be nice, too."

Hannah stiffened and crossed her arms in front of her protectively. Her entire demeanor was standoffish. She didn't want to hug Emily because she knew that if she did Emily would kiss her on the head and tell her that she loved her. She knew Emily would do that because Emily had been doing that for the last few days, and Hannah had been letting her. Hannah let her get too close. And now she was trying to put some distance between herself and her birth mother, but that was kind of hard with the woman sitting on her bed showing no signs of leaving until she got what she wanted. A hug wasn't too much to ask for, but to Hannah, the simple act suddenly felt like a betrayal to her adoptive mom's memory.

Hannah didn't know exactly when or how, but sometime in the last week she started thinking of Emily as a mother, and not just biologically. Without even realizing she was doing it, Hannah had referred to Emily as her mother when talking about her and had allowed Emily to refer to herself as such. Their relationship was building naturally, and the change had been so gradual Hannah barely noticed it, but there was a definitive shift in their dynamic that night. Hannah knew Emily wasn't her friend anymore, if she ever had been – was the concept of a mom who was her friend just a childish fantasy? In reality, Emily was just her mother.

But, now, every time she thought of Emily as a mother and not a friend, Hannah felt like she was being disloyal to the mom who raised her. Any mother-daughter interaction with the woman who was not her adoptive mom felt traitorous.

She was a bad daughter.

"Can you please just leave me alone? _Please_?" Hannah asked, hating the catch in her voice.

Emily might have given up then and let Hannah take the night to calm down before trying again in the morning if her daughter didn't sound so desperate to be left alone. Her instincts told her this was more than just a childish reaction to being in trouble. Something was wrong. "No," Emily said. "You've been acting like this since we got home, and-"

"It's not my home," Hannah interjected.

"No," Emily said with a weary sigh. She looked at her daughter with sad, tired eyes. "It's mine. And I love having you here," she told her daughter sincerely, "but you don't get to treat me like this in my own home."

"I'll leave then," Hannah said haughtily.

Emily stared at her fourteen year old incredulously and let out a short, harsh-sounding laugh. "Oh, no, you won't," she told her child. "You wanted to stay here while your dad was away," she reminded the insolent girl. "You don't get to leave now because you don't like what's happening. The only thing you're going to do is sit down and talk to me."

With a long-suffering sigh, Hannah sat down next to Emily on the bed, making sure to leave some space between them. She kept her gaze on the floor until she felt Emily lay a gentle hand on top of her knee. At the unexpected touch, her head snapped up and her eyes met Emily's. When she saw the pain in Emily's eyes, Hannah felt awful. "I'm sorry," Hannah said before she could stop herself.

"Why are you acting like this?" Emily asked for a second time. "Hannah, please…tell me what's wrong."

"You – you've been acting like you're my mom, and technically you are my mom, but I already had a mom…one I really, _really_ loved," Hannah said, unable to maintain her composure anymore as the tears she'd been trying so hard to hold back started streaming down her cheeks.

It was rare for Hannah to cry, and when she did cry, she almost never cried in front of anyone else. Maybe it was the little bit of alcohol that was still in her system lowering her inhibitions or maybe it was the crushing weight of her own guilt, but whatever it was, once Hannah started crying, she couldn't seem to stop.

Emily felt tears forming in her own eyes as she watched her child cry. She wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around the girl and provide all the love and comfort her daughter needed, but she knew Hannah wouldn't be very accepting of her touch. Hannah's whole motive was to push her away because she felt like Emily was encroaching on her adoptive mom's territory. That was why Hannah was acting like this. Hannah wasn't going to let Emily touch her.

The girl's feelings were probably building for a while now and only came to a head that night. She must have ignored her feelings until now, but Emily scolding her like only a mother would had been the trigger for this meltdown.

"You think that if your mom can't be here for you, she wouldn't want anyone else to be? Or at least not another mom?" Emily accurately guessed what the fourteen year old was thinking. It was very flawed logic, and she hoped Hannah would realize how ridiculous it sounded. "That's not how moms think."

"You don't know what she would think. You didn't know my mom," Hannah said.

"Not like you did, no," Emily agreed in a placating tone. "But I did meet her."

Hannah was shocked. Her mind was reeling as she narrowed her eyes in speculation. "You - you did?"

Emily nodded with a faraway look in her eyes. "Once. I chose your parents," Emily began to explain. "It's…not a decision I took lightly. If I couldn't raise you myself, I needed to know you were going to be with good people who would take really great care of you. And they did. Your dad still is. Without them, you wouldn't be who you are today," Emily said, giving credit where credit was due. The respectful tone she used when she spoke of Hannah's adoptive parents lowered the teenager's defenses a little. "I don't know if I have any right to be, but I'm proud of who you've become. You're a good kid. You're smart and you're funny and you're sweet. Of course, none of this is based on your behavior tonight." Emily gave her daughter a look that was a little pointed but not hard or unkind, even offering her a wry smile when she referenced the evening's events and her recent behavior.

Hannah's cheeks flushed. She was more ashamed than ever of how she'd been acting toward Emily and very uncomfortable with the praise she didn't feel like she deserved.

"I know because I've been there…if you can't be there for your child, you want someone else to do everything you wish you could for her," Emily continued with total conviction in her voice. "It's what I wanted for you. And I have to believe it's what your mom would want now. A mother's love is the most selfless love there is."

When Emily reached for her after that, Hannah didn't have the strength or will to fight her embrace. She let Emily pull her close and found herself taking as much comfort, if not more, from being in Emily's arms as she had taken from Emily's words.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Hannah murmured over and over.

"Shh," Emily soothed her daughter. "It's okay. You're okay."

Hannah pulled back a little. "It's not okay. I was so awful to you tonight. You should hate me."

"But I don't. I love you," Emily told her.

"I love you, too."


	26. Chapter 26

**A/N: **Thank you for to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter!

**Chapter 25**

With a quick glance at the clock on her nightstand, Emily realized she slept in later than she normally did, but then again, she didn't usually stay up until 2:00 in the morning. They got back to her condo a little after 1:00, and it took more than half an hour for Hannah to stop crying once her tears started. Emily held her until she was done crying, which meant Emily didn't crawl into her own bed until around 2:00.

Even when Emily was working a case, they usually called it quits by midnight unless there were extenuating circumstances. Late nights were a part of the job, but all-nighters were rare - they still needed to get some sleep if they were going to continue to be effective. And, as hard as the job was sometimes, nothing Emily saw in her work was as emotionally draining as seeing her own child hurting because, with Hannah, it was personal for her.

It was almost 9:00 am already. Now that she wasn't waking up early coughing, the earliest Hannah had woken up was 10:00 am and the latest was almost noon. Emily half-expected the teenager to try to stay holed up in the guest room all day – not that she was going to let her. But she knew that after last night Hannah would probably be embarrassed and might not know how to act around her.

Knowing the teenager might not come out of the guest room willingly, Emily got herself ready and then went on a quick coffee run with the hope that Hannah's favorite coffee drink would be enough to draw her out.

From where she sat on the couch enjoying her own decaf coffee, Emily listened carefully for any sounds coming from the guest room. It helped that when she finally left her physically and emotionally exhausted daughter in the early hours of the morning, Emily left the door to the guest room cracked open a little. She heard the first stirrings a little before 10:30…the rustling of the covers and the box springs on the older bed in the guest room squeaking when her daughter's weight shifted on it as the girl moved.

Emily waited several minutes to see if Hannah was going to come out on her own. When it was clear she wasn't coming out, Emily went to get her.

"Hannah?" Emily called, standing just outside the bedroom door.

When Hannah didn't respond, Emily went into the room uninvited. Her daughter was lying perfectly still under the covers, but Emily had heard the covers rustling mere seconds ago.

Emily walked over to the bed and stood near Hannah's head. Even though she hadn't had a fever for a few days now, Hannah was still a little congested. Every time she fell asleep in the living room on the couch, she slept with her mouth open. With her sinus congestion, she couldn't breathe very well so she inevitably ended up breathing through her mouth at night. Her mouth was closed now though. Her lips were pressed together in a tight line, the corners of her mouth tugging downward in a small frown as she tried hard to stay still under intense scrutiny from her birth mother. It wasn't the relaxed face of a kid who was sleeping peacefully.

Emily smiled knowingly as she looked down at her daughter. "I know you're not really sleeping."

Hannah gave up and opened her eyes. She didn't sit up in the bed, but she turned her head to look at Emily with a red face and rather sheepish expression. She was already embarrassed enough to face her birth mother after literally crying _on_ the woman like a much younger kid – that was the whole reason she stayed in the guest room and pretended like she was still sleeping in the first place. Now she was even more embarrassed to be called out for faking sleep. "How'd you know?" The fourteen year old wondered.

Emily stared at her kid a little incredulously, but there was amusement in her eyes. "Like I'm gonna tell you," Emily said with a slight scoff. "If I tell you what gave you away, you won't do it again. Then how will I know you're faking?" Emily asked teasingly. It was a rhetorical question, and she moved on without waiting for an answer. "I got you a coffee. Peppermint mocha, right?"

It was only then that Hannah noticed Emily had a takeaway coffee cup in her hand. The young teenager finally sat up, scooting back in the bed so her back was resting against the headboard. "Thank you," she said gratefully, reaching for the proffered cup eagerly.

"Uh-uh. Sorry, but you have to actually get out of bed," Emily told her, moving the cup just out of reach. There was no way she was letting Hannah have it in bed. The whole point was to draw her kid out of the room she was currently holed up in.

At Emily's prompting, the disgruntled teenager reluctantly got out of bed and gave her an expectant look. When Emily handed the cup over, Hannah took a sip of the peppermint mocha and let out a satisfied sigh.

"Addict," Emily teased.

"I think I'm going through caffeine withdrawal," Hannah said seriously. "You have no caffeinated beverages of any kind here."

Emily rolled her eyes at her teenage daughter's dramatics, but she was smiling indulgently when she responded with, "You poor, deprived child."

"I haven't had a Coke in _five_ days," Hannah told the woman.

"Is that a record for you?" Emily asked, mildly amused. Her kid never failed to entertain her.

"It is," Hannah said.

"Come on," Emily said with a soft chuckle. "I got breakfast, too." She threw an arm around her daughter's shoulders. She was pleased when the girl didn't attempt to disengage from her and allowed herself to be steered out of the room.

Hannah's face lit up when she saw the box from the bakery sitting on the kitchen counter. "You got cinnamon rolls? I _love_ cinnamon rolls."

Emily smiled at her child's newfound enthusiasm. She had a feeling Hannah would like cinnamon rolls. The girl's sweet tooth rivaled her own.

"Yeah, well, you've been here five days and I haven't given you food poisoning with my cooking," Emily pointed out as if this were a major accomplishment, "but I thought I'd get something you weren't afraid to eat."

"I appreciate that," Hannah said dryly, glancing up at Emily. "Thank you."

They served themselves and sat down opposite each other at the kitchen table. Emily was going to wait until Hannah was situated and eating before trying to talk to her. It had been impossible to have an actual conversation with her when she was tearful. The young teenager hadn't been very coherent once her tears started.

"Are we going to pretend nothing happened last night or are we going to talk about it?" Emily began after a moment, deciding not to beat around the bush.

"Pretend nothing happened," Hannah answered hopefully even though she knew better. Emily wouldn't have brought it up if that was really an option. Emily was going to make her talk about it.

Emily sighed in frustration at her daughter's clear reluctance to talk to her. "Hannah, we need to talk about it. Am I really that horrible to talk to?"

Hannah instantly felt bad for making her birth mother feel that way. It wasn't that. It was just that she didn't want another lecture. She felt like the woman had made her displeasure very clear the night before and knew her dad wasn't going to be any happier with her. "Only when you're lecturing me," she told the older woman half-jokingly. "The rest of the time I like talking to you."

"Then why do I get the feeling you'd rather die of boredom or starvation in my guest room than talk to me?" Emily asked.

Hannah sighed resignedly. "What do you want to talk about? The advances in modern technology that will happen while I'm grounded for last night?" She quipped, hoping to garner a little bit of sympathy.

"No," Emily told her overly dramatic teenage daughter with just a hint of amusement in her voice. "We need to talk about last night. Or should I say this morning?" Emily gave the girl a pointed look as she referenced the time that they got in for the night. It was after 1:00 am so technically it was morning.

"I said I was sorry," Hannah said defensively.

"I know. You only apologized about a hundred times last night," Emily teased gently. "Look, Hannah, last night's the first time I've ever really gotten mad at you, and it probably won't be the last. But I'm not mad anymore. Really," she assured her kid who still looked a little on edge. "It's okay."

Hannah looked up from her half-eaten cinnamon roll, frowning in confusion. "Then what do we need to talk about?"

"You were really upset, honey," Emily replied cautiously. "Bottling your feelings up isn't good for you." That may be a little hypocritical of her to say, but it was also true. Emily had seen the effects bottling her emotions up had on her fourteen year old firsthand when Hannah got to her breaking point and all of the repressed feelings burst out in the form of tears. Emily _hated_ seeing her daughter cry like that and knew she had to push the reticent teenager to talk. "Talking will help."

It had already helped. Emily just didn't know it yet.

It had been Emily's words that helped assuage Hannah's guilt…_ If you can't be there for your child, you want someone else to do everything you wish you could for her. It's what I wanted for you. And I have to believe it's what your mom would want now. _

Hannah wondered if that was really how her adoptive mom would feel about Emily now. Emily seemed so sure that it was. And who would know better than her birth mother what it felt like to know someone else – another mom – was doing all of the things that she should have been doing?

Even though her adoptive mom was the only mom Hannah remembered, logically she knew she was Emily's daughter before she was ever Sarah Johnson's daughter. Hannah just hadn't ever really thought about it like that until Emily talked to her about choosing her adoptive parents. Hearing how her birth mother felt about the parents Hannah had grown up with helped her understand – as much as any fourteen year old could possibly understand anyway. The girl was not old enough to be a mother and couldn't really fathom the kind of selfless love Emily spoke of – the kind of love a mother felt for her child.

"It did help. My mom always knew what to say to make me feel better, and, somehow…last night you knew what to say to make me feel better, too," Hannah confessed a little shyly, still feeling awkward and embarrassed about having cried like a much younger child.

"Everything I said was true," Emily told her daughter.

"Last night aside," Hannah said ruefully, "things between you and me have been good. You've been pretty great, and I know I haven't – I haven't always made it easy." The fourteen year old was thinking about how her thoughts and feelings toward her birth mother had changed and what she really wanted. When she spoke again, it almost sounded like she was trying to justify her thoughts and feelings to herself. "You know, when I first found out who you really were, I couldn't help being curious about you. I just wanted to get to know you. That's all. I already had a mom. I didn't need another one. But…that's what you are."

"I know how much you loved your mom. And I know I'm not her," Emily said, referring to Sarah Johnson. Emily wanted to be very clear on that point. She knew her daughter was having a really hard time with the idea that Emily was taking Sarah's place in her life, but Emily was not a substitute or replacement for Hannah's adoptive mom. "We are two different people, and your relationship with me is going to be different from the relationship you had with her."

"But you're my mom, too," Hannah blurted out, not wanting to lose her new mother figure when she was just starting to accept that was what Emily was.

Considering how deeply conflicted Hannah was feeling about that very thing not even twenty-four hours ago, Emily didn't expect that acknowledgement from her. She was a little stunned by it. A spark of hope flared in Emily's heart, ignited by the pure, unadulterated love she had for her child. This was what she'd wanted all along. And there she had it, right from the girl herself - she was Hannah's mom, too.

"Yes, I am," Emily said, a smile slowly spreading across her face. "I love you, Hannah."

"Love you, too," the teenager mumbled in response, already going back to her breakfast.

After breakfast and showers, they set the Scrabble board up on the coffee table and played while streaming the first show that they both agreed on – _Stranger Things_ – until it was time for Hannah to go home.

When she dropped Hannah off late that afternoon, Emily went in so she could talk to Steve. He heard them in the entryway and came out of the laundry room right away to greet them. "Hey," he said, smiling at them both but mainly at the sight of his daughter. "You're a sight for sore eyes. I missed you, angel," he told the girl as he pulled her in for a hug. He caught Emily's eyes over his daughter's head. "Thank you for taking her."

Emily shook her head. "You don't have to thank me. But, um, we do need to talk about last night."

"Uh-oh," Steve said, his smile faltering for the first time as he glanced down at Hannah. "What happened last night?" He asked warily.

"I was a little late," Hannah said as she shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.

Emily gave the girl an incredulous look, scoffing slightly. "A little? Try an hour." Emily was actually being generous there. Hannah had been an hour late when she finally called her back. She'd been more like an hour and a half late by the time they finally got back to Emily's place for the night.

"An hour? Hannah!" Steve scolded. "Not okay." It wasn't the first time the teenager had missed her curfew, but an hour was just ridiculous.

"I know," Hannah said sheepishly. "Emily already yelled at me."

"I didn't _yell_," Emily protested. "I…talked to you calmly."

Steve watched the exchange with surprise. He would have thought Emily would leave him to be the bad guy, but she didn't.

When he left her with Emily, the adoptive father was afraid his daughter would see her birth mother's house as more fun than their house because she didn't have to follow his rules there. To Emily's credit, she made Hannah ask him for permission to go to the party. She didn't just say yes. And, when Hannah missed the curfew he gave her, it sounded like Emily yelled at her – or, at the very least, scolded her. Hannah would know from this experience that staying at Emily's house wasn't a vacation from the rules. It wouldn't be somewhere for the teenager to run when she didn't like the rules or didn't want to be in trouble with him. That made the adoptive father feel a lot better about the situation.

"I hope you had fun because you won't be going to any parties anytime soon," Steve told the teenager. "Take your stuff upstairs. Go now," he urged when she hesitated. He wanted a moment alone with Emily and then they needed to get to the dog daycare where they boarded Alex before it closed.

Hannah said goodbye to Emily and took her bag up to her room, leaving the two adults alone.

Embarrassed that his kid got in trouble at someone else's house, Steve apologized to Emily as soon as Hannah was out of earshot. "I'm sorry. I can't believe she did that." He shook his head in complete disbelief. He didn't know what the fourteen year old could have been thinking.

"She was testing me," Emily said. "I assume she's grounded?"

"She is," Steve confirmed.

"What does that mean for me?" Emily questioned. "We talked about a set visitation schedule, but am I allowed to see her when she's grounded?"

"It depends on what you have in mind. Do you have any hard labor she can do?" Steve joked. Even though he hadn't really thought about how visitation would work when Hannah was grounded, he knew he had to give the woman a real answer, and he didn't really feel like he could say no. The visitation schedule was his idea, not hers. She was against it. Although he wasn't ready to admit it yet, the adoptive father was starting to realize that a set schedule was not a magic solution. "Yes, you can still take her to brunch on Saturday," he conceded wearily. "She's grounded from friends. You're not really a friend."

Unlike Hannah, Steve did not see Emily as Hannah's mom. Sarah was Hannah's mom. Sarah would always be her mom. But he did recognize that Emily wasn't just Hannah's friend. As far as he was concerned, Emily was…an adult that he trusted with his daughter.

**A/N:** The next few chapters won't be nearly as OC-centric. The BAU team will be back at work


	27. Chapter 27

**A/N:** As always, thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter.

**Chapter 26**

It felt weird not having Hannah there in the morning. It hadn't even been a full week, but Emily got used to having her daughter there. She missed her already.

She was, however, ready to get back to work and knew she wouldn't have been able to do that if Hannah was still there. She would never have left the fourteen year old alone overnight with no supervision.

Although the team had been out of rotation, Emily had been staying on top of her email. Everyone on the team knew they had a case and would be meeting in the conference room at 9:00 am to brief the new case - a killer in Portland who was blinding his victims before killing them. They had two confirmed murders and two potential murders. Serial killers didn't take the holidays off.

Emily was the first one in the office. She had about an hour before everyone else would be there. She took the time to start working her way through the large stack of mail that had accumulated on her desk, not expecting anything terribly interesting. She was going to be in for a big surprise – and not a good one.

There was a notification of an upcoming parole hearing in Colorado that someone from the BAU would need to attend. They didn't always attend parole hearings, but there were times like this when their presence was requested. Emily tried to remember the details of the case in question as she debated between sending Reid or Rossi to the parole hearing – they were the only other two profilers on the team at the time the offender who was now up for parole was arrested. JJ had been on the team as well but as the Communications Liaison.

Emily temporarily set aside a thick, bulging manila envelope with a return address of the Sheriff's Department in a small town in rural Alabama. Most requests for their help came in electronically, but there were still some departments that sent hard copy requests along with copies of the file they had up until that point on whatever case they were requesting the BAU's help with. Sometimes they did this because they thought physical mail would be more likely to get a positive response than email. It was easy to decide an email request didn't merit BAU help without even opening the attachments, but it was impossible to ignore the gruesome crime scene photos that would spill out of an envelope such as this one when opened. Other times it was just an old school sheriff who was set in his or her ways and resisting the shift to technology.

There was another large manila envelope under the first. Emily was prepared to set it aside as well, but the lack of return address gave her pause. Any incoming mail went through a rigid screening process before it ever made its way to her desk so she knew it was safe to open, but an envelope with no return address wasn't usually a good thing in this line of work. That wasn't the only thing that was strange. It was addressed to Hotch, not her.

It happened less and less, but she did still get occasional mail that had her predecessor's name on it instead of her own. Opening someone else's mail was considered a federal offense, but mail that was intended for the former Unit Chief of the BAU was re-routed to her as a matter of course. The Bureau assumed anything addressed to Aaron Hotchner was really intended for the current Unit Chief of the BAU – Emily Prentiss – and usually it was.

Emily decided to go ahead and open it. The only thing in the large manila envelope was a single picture of a young teenage boy. It had been years since she'd last seen Jack Hotchner, but Emily recognized him immediately. He had his father's eyes and his father's dimples when he smiled. He was definitely a Hotchner. Jack wasn't posing for the picture. He didn't even appear to know it was being taken. He was smiling in the picture but not for the camera. He was looking off to the side at someone else, and not the person taking the photo.

There were two more manila envelopes that had been buried under the one addressed to Hotch. One of them was addressed to Emily and the other was addressed to Derek Morgan. Otherwise, the envelopes were identical to the one containing the picture of Jack – no return address, same exact font on the printed label with the name of the person the envelope was intended for, same size and weight.

Emily put latex gloves on before carefully opening the envelope that was addressed to her. She expected it, but she still felt a shiver run down her spine when a picture of Hannah fell out of the envelope. The girl was standing in front of Emily's building and the clothes she was wearing were the clothes she wore on New Year's Eve. Emily assumed the picture was taken when Hannah was outside waiting for her ride. It was greatly disturbing that someone had gotten close enough to her fourteen year old daughter to take the photo when the girl was under Emily's care. Shaken to her core, Emily stared at the picture for several long seconds. There was no note with the picture. The picture was the message, and the threat was implied.

Emily already knew what was in the envelope addressed to Derek without opening it. She put it aside for now, disposed of the latex gloves she was wearing, and got up from her chair.

Emily found Penelope in the break room, happily chatting away to Rossi and JJ about the holidays while the three of them waited for a pot of coffee to brew.

"Hey Penelope, can you check school attendance records and see if Jack Hotchner and Hannah Johnson were present in their first period classes today?" Emily asked with a note of urgency in her voice.

The unusual request first thing in the morning before she'd even had her coffee flustered Penelope, who blinked in confusion as she processed the request. "Hannah Johnson – you mean your Hannah?"

"Yes," Emily answered simply, not offering any additional information yet.

"Emily, what's going on?" Rossi questioned, his internal alarm flaring at the mention of his godson and a girl he already thought of as family.

"I'll explain," Emily promised. "But I need to know that both Jack and Hannah are okay first."

Penelope Garcia's curiosity was killing her, but there would be time for Emily to answer all of her questions – and Emily _would_ answer all of her questions - once they knew the teenagers were at school. "You'll know where mini-Hotch and mini-Emily are before the magical elixir also known as coffee is done brewing," the tech analyst assured her friend, leaving her still-empty unicorn mug on the counter in the break room as she left for her lair.

"Have either of you checked your mail yet?" Emily asked the two profilers who remained in the room with her.

JJ shook her head. "Should we have?" She queried a little warily.

Emily nodded with a grave expression. "I need to know if you received a large manila envelope with no return address. If you did, don't open it yet."

"Okay," JJ said slowly, finding the instruction strange but trusting Emily enough to follow it.

The only reason the mail addressed to Aaron Hotchner and Derek Morgan came to Emily was because they were no longer agents and she was the leader of the team they had once been a part of. For all the Unit Chief knew, everyone on the team had received a similar envelope.

As it turned out, JJ was the only other member of the team to receive one. Emily checked with the others who were slowly filtering in as she headed back up to her office with JJ following closely behind, envelope in hand.

"You may want to sit down," Emily suggested worriedly as the two women entered Emily's office, her words only serving to make the blonde profiler more anxious. Emily sat down in her desk chair so she was facing JJ. Once they were both seated, Emily slid the photograph of her daughter across the surface of her desk so the blonde could see it. "This is what was in the envelope that was addressed to me." She thought it would help prepare JJ if she knew what to expect.

When JJ tore her own envelope open, two pictures fell out of it – one of her three year old sitting in the new electric police car Santa brought him for Christmas on the sidewalk in front of their house and one of her ten year old kicking the soccer ball around in their front yard.

Emily reached over to put a comforting hand on top of JJ's and asked, "Where are Henry and Michael right now?"

"Will dropped Michael off at daycare, and Henry – oh, God, Henry took the bus to school," JJ said, looking up at Emily with horror as she realized her oldest son had been waiting at the bus stop alone that morning.

"He's probably fine," Emily spoke quickly to try to reassure her friend. "The picture of Hannah was taken when she was alone in front of my building waiting for a friend to pick her up. Whoever took it had an opportunity to take her and didn't. Call the school and make sure Henry's there."

JJ made the call and confirmed that Henry was, in fact, at school. She called the daycare, too, even though Will would have called her if anything happened.

According to Penelope, Jack and Hannah were also both marked present in their first period classes that morning.

Once they knew none of their kids were actually missing, they agreed to regroup in the conference room in fifteen minutes. Penelope argued a little because she wanted to know everything right that very second, but Emily wasn't budging. Emily had two phone calls to make, and she wasn't really looking forward to either of them.

Because Hank Spencer Morgan was the only child they hadn't checked on (he wasn't old enough to be in school), Emily called Derek first.

"Hey, princess," Derek answered fondly, his smile coming through in his voice. "Long time, no talk. What, are you too busy for us peasants now that you're Unit Chief?" He teased.

"We do need to catch up, but that's not why I called," Emily told him regretfully.

"So I take it this isn't a social call?" Derek surmised, no longer smiling.

"No," Emily responded with a weary sigh. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but-"

"Is everyone okay?" Derek interrupted as his worry built. It was a valid question. With what they did, anything could happen. Since Derek had been gone, Reid had gone to prison. And then JJ had called him just over a year ago when Garcia was having a hard time with memories from when she was shot. He worried about them...all of them.

"Everyone's okay here," Emily assured her old friend. "Is Hank okay?"

"Yeah. Why wouldn't he be?" Derek demanded, instantly on edge.

"Some of us received envelopes containing pictures of our loved ones in the mail," Emily began to explain. "Derek…there's an envelope here for you."

"What are you waiting for? Go ahead and open it," Derek told her. If Savannah or Hank were in danger, he needed to know.

There was a moment of silence as Emily put a new pair of latex gloves on and opened the envelope. The grinning toddler in the picture that fell out of the envelope had grown so much since the last time Emily had seen a baby picture of him. Even though he wasn't immediately recognizable to her, Emily knew it was Hank Spencer Morgan. "It's a picture of Hank," she confirmed.

"Where is he? What's he doing?" Derek questioned her as he wondered how in the hell someone got a picture of his baby boy without him noticing.

Instead of guessing at the answers he wanted, Emily took a picture of the photograph with her cell phone and texted it to Derek.

"This was taken at the park by our house. He was with me," Derek said in a surprised tone as he looked at the picture of his son. "Emily, I didn't notice anyone suspicious."

"Don't feel bad," Emily told him. "No one else did either."

"This is why I left that job in the first place," Derek vented his frustration. "Now some sick freak is taking pictures of my son. Do you have any idea who it was?"

"It has to be someone we crossed paths with when you and Hotch were still on the team. Other than that, no," Emily said, thinking aloud. She didn't mention that it would be from a time she was on the team, too. They could ignore cases from the months she was in Paris and any cases the BAU took after she accepted a position as Unit Chief with Interpol in London.

Because Derek didn't know about Hannah, Emily couldn't possibly explain the picture she received. She wasn't going to tell her old friend that she had Ian Doyle's baby over the phone. After her fake death, Derek was the one who went after Doyle basically on his own. With the bad blood there, he probably wasn't going to congratulate Emily for bringing Doyle's baby into the world.

Derek groaned. "Oh, man, not Hotch, too?"

"He's my next call," Emily said grimly.

"Good luck with that," Derek told her, not unkindly.

"Thanks," Emily said sarcastically. "I'll keep you updated-" Emily started to promise.

"Keep me updated?" Derek cut her off. "Emily, you don't really think I'm gonna sit here and do nothing when my son's being targeted, do you? Not if I can help."

Emily nodded in understanding even though he couldn't see her. She would have felt the same way. "I'll see you soon."

Emily was absolutely dreading her next call.

Hotch already lost Haley because he refused to make a deal with Foyet. He could have easily lost Jack then, too. The little boy had been alone in that house with a serial killer. And then Hotch lost his friends for not just months but _years_ when he and Jack were in the Witness Protection Program hiding from Mr. Scratch. Emily felt terrible that her friend's son was once again in danger. Didn't the father and son deserve a break?

"Let me guess, you're calling to cancel because you have a case," Hotch said when he answered, assuming that was why she was calling. He'd made that same call to Haley and Beth enough times, but it felt strange to be on the other side of it. He was looking forward to dinner with Emily and had to make a concerted effort to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

Cancel? The plans they made to grab dinner and drinks were the furthest thing from her mind so it took Emily a second to figure out what he was talking about. She was sure they would _not_ be going to dinner, at least not any time soon, but that wasn't actually why she was calling. Somehow, she didn't think he would want to leave Jack to have dinner after he heard what she had to say. She decided to just rip off the band-aid.

"No," she said solemnly. She took a deep breath. "I'm calling because some of us received envelopes containing pictures, and, uh – there's really no easy way to say this - there was an envelope here for you with a picture of Jack in it. I'm sending you the picture now. Check your text messages." She pressed the send button on her phone, sending the digital picture she'd taken of the hard copy.

"This was sent to the BAU?" Hotch questioned, his voice coming across as more distant because he put her on speaker phone to check his text messages.

"Yes," Emily replied. "Obviously, there was no return address. The envelopes and pictures need to be processed, but…"

"They won't find anything we don't already know," Hotch said knowingly, finishing her thought. They both knew there would be no fingerprints or DNA. "That's Jessica's house in the background, which means whoever took the photo of Jack is in D.C. We don't need to know what postal zone it came from to know that."

"No, we don't," Emily agreed with him. "The other pictures were all taken in D.C., too."

"Who else received one?" Hotch inquired.

"JJ, Derek, you, and me," Emily responded. "So far it's just the pictures. The picture of Hannah was taken when she was alone. She could have been taken then, but she wasn't. And Henry rode the bus to school today. He could have been taken when he was waiting at the bus stop, but he wasn't."

"He's taunting us," Hotch said, referring to the unknown sender. "There was no note?"

"No," Emily said. "Only the pictures."

They were both wondering the same thing – how long the unknown sender would be content to taunt them with pictures before making a move on one of their kids.

"You know you'll never get protective detail approved for all of us, not if all you have is the photos. You're going to need all the help you can get," Hotch told her.

"If you're offering, I'm not saying no," Emily replied.

"I'm offering."

After they said goodbye, Emily called down to the front desk to let them know Derek Morgan and Aaron Hotchner were coming and would need visitor's badges. By the time they arrived, Emily had filled the team in. They had over a hundred old case files on the table in the conference room and were just discussing which cases they should start with.

"All we really know is that Aaron, Emily, JJ, and Derek all worked the case. You all worked together for, what, six years? That doesn't exactly narrow it down, does it?" Rossi mused wryly.

"It does, actually," Reid offered, looking up from an open case file to meet Rossi's gaze with a pensive expression as he had what he thought was a lightbulb moment. "You didn't get anything, and you were on the team for most of that time. If we take all the cases you worked out, there are only seventeen cases Emily worked that you didn't."

They'd all worked with Reid long enough not to question how he knew the exact number of BAU cases Emily worked with the team prior to Rossi coming back to the BAU off the top of his head.

"Or maybe I didn't get anything because I don't have any little Rossis running around," Rossi responded dryly.

"You have Joy," Emily pointed out.

"Yeah, but Joy's not really a kid anymore," Rossi reasoned.

"Dave's right. If the unsub's fixated on children, he wouldn't be interested in adult children," Tara spoke up in agreement with Rossi.

"Okay, then we need to go back through every case the four of us ever worked where the unsub was targeting children, looking for anyone who might hold a grudge against us," Emily concluded wearily. "Forget Portland. We're not even going to think about taking on another case until we know who's behind these pictures."

"Wouldn't it only be cases where the guy got away or is out of prison now?" Luke asked.

"Unless it's not the guy we arrested. What if we're looking for a parent whose kid we couldn't save?" Dave wondered as he tried to think through who would threaten the kids of profilers. "We couldn't save their kid, and now they're targeting our kids so we know how it feels."

"Grief can make people do things they wouldn't normally do, but if the death of the child were the trigger, why would the parent of a victim who died several years ago wait until now to seek revenge?" Tara questioned logically.

"They wouldn't," Simmons stated matter-of-factly.

"Nah, it's got to be someone who was locked up until now," Luke said confidently.

"So what we're actually looking for here is a case where the _unsub_ lost a child?" Reid clarified. "That doesn't necessarily mean _the case_ involved children."

Emily glanced down at her cell phone, reading a text message from the front desk. "Derek's here. I'll be right back."

Visitors to the FBI headquarters needed an escort. Emily intended to give the former team members free rein, but she still had to go down and get them from the lobby.

She was glad Derek was the first to arrive. It would give her a chance to tell him about her daughter.

After giving him a quick hug and exchanging pleasantries, Emily badged Derek in and found an unused conference room on the first floor where they could talk.

"Aren't we going up to the BAU?" Derek asked as he followed her. He didn't have any intention of sitting down. From the moment he found out someone was threatening his son, Derek felt the familiar rush of adrenaline that he always felt when he was knee-deep in a case. He needed to do something. There was nothing he could do in this empty conference room.

"We are, but Hotch should be here soon so we might as well wait for him," Emily explained. "And there's something I need to tell you before we go up," she added as she closed the door to the conference room behind them.

"I'm listening," Derek told her, giving Emily his full attention.

Emily was afraid to tell him, but she knew she either told him now or he would find out in front of everyone else. He was going to notice the picture of a random teenage girl up there with all of the other pictures. "You already know that the unsub sent a picture of Hank and Jack," Emily started. "He also sent a picture of Henry and Michael, and one of my daughter."

"Hold up, your daughter? You have a kid now?" Derek said with a surprised look on his face. He knew Emily wanted kids – they all knew that. She'd almost taken a kid who was orphaned during one of their cases home with her. "You finally did it then? Adopted?" He automatically assumed, his face breaking out into a quick, easy grin. "That's great, Emily."

"Derek, stop," Emily stopped him, knowing he wouldn't be saying that if he knew everything. "I didn't adopt." Quite the opposite, in fact. "I gave her up for adoption…fourteen years ago. She's…" Emily looked down, not wanting to see the way Derek would look at her after this. "She's Ian Doyle's."

Her romantic relationship with Doyle wasn't news to him. A younger, less mature version of Derek Morgan had once summed their relationship up as Emily sleeping with Ian Doyle for a profile. He'd been angry at the time, and rightfully so with all of the secrets and lies, but he wasn't angry anymore. He hadn't been angry with her about Doyle for a long time now.

He was glad Emily didn't ever hear him say that. Back then he only said it to Rossi when he was really fired up. It wasn't what he was going to say to Emily now.

Maybe he'd grown up a little since then. Or maybe it was because knowing about Declan changed things for him. Derek knew why Emily did what she did. Even if he didn't agree with it, he got it.

Going under that deep and for that long and still coming out of it on the other side as the person he knew as his friend and partner…that was something not everyone could – or would – be able to do. Emily Prentiss was still his friend.

"Emily, look at me," Derek said as he took in his strong, brave friend's unusually defeated posture. He waited for her to lift her gaze, hating the self-doubt he saw in her eyes. "Do you remember what I said to you when we found you in that warehouse in Boston?"

"When I was bleeding out?" Emily asked with raised eyebrows. "No."

In her defense, she'd been lying on the ground, half-alive, at the time.

"I said I knew why you did it. I said I was proud of you," Derek told her, looking her straight in the eye. "I still am. You saved Declan. He still doing okay?"

"He's in college now, playing soccer for Georgetown. Last time I checked on him, he wanted to be a teacher," Emily said with a small, fond smile.

"Good for him. You know, he grew up to be a good kid in spite of who his dad was. That's all because of you. You know that, right? You did what you had to do for him," Derek said. "I know how much you wanted kids, and I always thought you'd be a good mom, but you did what you had to for your daughter, too. There's no way Doyle would've left her alone when he came after you all those years ago. But what I don't get is this…you hid her from Doyle, and someone finds out about her now? How is that possible?"

Emily blew out a breath. "Because for the last month, I've been getting to know her. And someone's already using her to get to me." She shook her head in frustration. "This job…"

"I know," Derek said. "We're going to get this guy before anyone gets hurt."

Emily nodded in agreement, offering him a small smile.

When they emerged from the conference room, they saw Hotch checking in with the front desk. It was perfect timing.

The three of them exchanged greetings and headed up to the BAU, where everyone was busy poring over old case files, which they'd sorted into three different piles. Reid explained the "classification system" they came up with to Emily, Hotch, and Morgan.

There was one stack for cases where the unsub had a child and another for cases where children were the victims. And, finally, there was a stack for cases where both criteria were met…the unsub had a child _and_ his or her victims were children. This last stack was the one they started with. Each profiler had a folder from it open in front of them. While they did this, Penelope was in her office, checking prison databases so they could eliminate any cases where the unsub was still incarcerated.

"The gang's all back together again," Rossi quipped as the old team members joined them at the table, ready to get to work.

**A/N:** Thanks for reading! I know some people wanted to see Derek Morgan. I didn't have this particular story line planned out when I started this story, but I thought it was a good way to bring Derek and Hotch back to the BAU for one case and it actually helps me develop some other plot points that I did have planned. Anyway, the unsub is someone we've seen before in the show, and the agents targeted by this unsub will hopefully make sense as this story line plays out. I hope the readers who wanted Derek enjoy :) He'll be around for a little while. If there's something or someone you want to see, please let me know and I'll do my best to include it if it fits with the direction of this story.


	28. Chapter 28

**A/N: **Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter.

**Chapter 27**

Even with Reid there reading twenty thousand words per second and two extra sets of eyes, they spent all morning and most of the afternoon going through old cases. It was kind of depressing to look back on closed cases and see how many of the people they arrested were back out on the streets now. So much for justice.

According to Reid, approximately ninety-five percent of all inmates were eventually released back into society. Even most 'life' sentences were eligible for parole after only fourteen years.

Personally, Rossi thought more of them deserved the death penalty.

Serial killers generally got a minimum sentence of life without parole but not always, and not everyone the BAU caught had actually killed more than one person. It was rare for the BAU to help in cases with a low death toll, but it did happen, especially when children were involved. Some of the unsubs they caught over the years were only found guilty of kidnapping and attempted murder, and many of them were eventually released on parole.

There were also unsubs who were under eighteen at the time of their crimes and received lighter sentences because of their age. Even when minor children were tried as adults, judges and juries were more sympathetic to children who were on trial. People inherently wanted to believe in the innocence of children. In cases where the evidence of a child's guilt was overwhelming, people wanted the child to get help. The goal with a juvenile offender was almost always rehabilitation rather than punishment. It was a noble goal, but the profilers knew rehabilitation wasn't always possible.

They usually didn't have any suspects when they began an investigation. Even if the local police had a suspect they liked for it, the BAU went in without any bias. They started with victimology and crime scene, studying the behavior of the unsub to build the profile. This time there was no crime scene. There hadn't even really been a crime yet – at the most, the person they were looking for was stalking them and their kids, but there was nothing law enforcement could do for victims of stalking until the stalker did something. Even if they knew exactly who had sent the pictures of their children, the agents wouldn't have a reason to arrest him or her. It was a waiting game, but no one in the BAU conference room was going to wait for one of the monsters the team had hunted to make a move on their child. Figuring out who they were dealing with would help them predict what the person would do next. They needed to get ahead of this.

By early afternoon, they had three suspects – Danny Murphy, Jeremy Sayer, and Claire Bates. The agents who had worked the cases originally summarized the details of the crimes each suspect had committed for the newer members of the BAU team.

"Danny Murphy turned eighteen a few weeks ago on December 23rd," Emily began. "He was institutionalized in 2009 after he killed his younger brother, Kyle, by stuffing model airplane parts down Kyle's throat."

"He was released on his eighteenth birthday?" Hotch questioned.

"He was. Not exactly a cause for celebration," Emily commented dryly.

"That kid was a straight up sociopath," Derek stated bluntly.

Tara's eyes narrowed in thought as she mentally calculated how old Danny would have been in 2009 based on his eighteenth birthday. "He would have been nine." She looked at Derek quizzically, her background in forensic psychology coming into play. "We don't diagnose adolescents with antisocial personality disorders."

"Nine?" Luke repeated the age a little incredulously. He hadn't done the math yet and didn't realize how young Danny Murphy would have been at the time until Tara stated his age. Even for a profiler, it was shocking to hear about a kid that young killing someone. "That's gotta be…"

"The youngest killer the BAU has ever seen," Reid spoke up, knowing what Luke was thinking.

"He had already killed a puppy and his little brother. He felt nothing, no guilt or remorse. We couldn't diagnose him because of his age, but he was a textbook sociopath," Emily confirmed.

"And he almost got away with murder. His parents tried to protect him. They even had a cop who was a friend of the family that was willing to go away for a murder he didn't commit to protect Danny," Rossi explained for the benefit of the newer members of the team.

"If it wasn't for the BAU's involvement, he would have gotten away with it," Hotch said with absolute certainty. "Which means if anyone has a grudge against this team, it's him."

"He saw how his parents reacted to his brother's death," JJ observed. "He knows the best way to hurt a parent is through their child."

They needed to talk to the Murphys, but the parents tried to protect Danny before. They might do that again now.

The records from Danny's psychiatrist would be more useful than anything his parents had to say, but most psychiatrists refused to talk to law enforcement without a warrant, and the agents knew they couldn't get a warrant with no actual evidence pointing to Danny Murphy.

Danny was barely eighteen and had no resources to his name, but it wasn't even a three-hour drive from his last known location of Cherry Hill, NJ to D.C. It wouldn't be that hard for him to get there if he really wanted to. He wouldn't have the money for a hotel room and he didn't have a car unless he 'borrowed' one from his parents. If he was there, he was probably on the streets. That would make him harder to find.

Talking about Danny Murphy, who was the youngest sociopath the BAU had ever encountered, made Derek think of Jeremy Sayer. At thirteen, Jeremy was already a budding psychopath even though he was also too young to be diagnosed with an antisocial personality disorder.

After a lifetime of incidents in his home that culminated with him breaking his younger sister's arm, his mother abandoned him at a hospital in Nebraska. Jeremy turned his rage toward his own mother against other mothers, killing their children and husbands in front of family matriarchs as a method of mental torture for the mothers before finally killing the mothers in an especially brutal manner.

Jeremy's ultimate goal was to kill his sister while his mother watched, but the BAU stopped him before he could. As he was being led out to the car in handcuffs, he yelled that he was thirteen and would see his mom in five years, presumably to finish what he started. He didn't actually get parole when he was eighteen, largely due to Derek Morgan showing up at the parole hearing, but Jeremy was granted parole at his second parole hearing two years later. He'd been out on parole for a little over a year.

It wasn't one of the cases they pulled because JJ wasn't on the team at the time, but it was only about a month after JJ left the BAU to work for the Pentagon. Derek still thought Jeremy Sayer was worth looking into for this, and Rossi was quick to agree. There were some killers that just stayed with them, and he was one of them. They didn't see many thirteen year old family annihilators. Both men remembered Jeremy well and argued that if he had simply searched for the BAU team online, there was a good chance he thought JJ was part of the team at the time of his arrest and targeted her along with Morgan, Hotch, and Prentiss.

"We need to call Mrs. Sayer," Emily decided.

"Easy for you because you, my dear Emily, have me, but if Jeremy wanted to call his mom, it would be hard. Kendra Sayer changed her phone number after he was arrested," Penelope said all of this very quickly. "She also moved, and not just across town but to another state. Minnesota."

"She doesn't want to be found," Hotch deduced.

"Not by Jeremy anyway," Emily muttered.

"What about his sister?" Rossi asked. "She would be, what, seventeen or eighteen now?"

Penelope's fingertips flew across the keyboard as she found the girl's date of birth. "Caroline Sayer is seventeen. She's a senior in high school."

"A kid that age has to have social media," Derek said, glancing at Penelope questioningly as he wondered if Jeremy could have found his mom and sister that way.

"No, at least not under her real name," Penelope replied. "I can keep looking. Sometimes kids use a nickname."

"Please do," Emily told the tech analyst. "We also need anything you can find on Jeremy – last known address, job, car, name of his parole officer."

She was the agent who had the most previous interaction with Jeremy's mother so Emily took it upon herself to call the woman while the team continued going through old case files. At first Kendra Sayer lied and said she didn't have a son. When Emily told her they were looking into a crime and believed Jeremy might be involved, the other woman finally acknowledged that Jeremy was her son but said she hadn't seen or spoken to him since the day he was arrested. Emily believed her. This was not a mother who was trying to protect her son. This was a mother who was trying to protect her daughter _from_ her son.

After going through every single old case file they had pulled, they came up with just one more suspect – Claire Bates. Her victims were children and she had a son of her own who was taken by Social Services after a seven-day evaluation. She then abducted five year old Ethan Hayes and cared for him as if he were her newborn before smothering him to death with a pillow, recreating the loss of her baby. With Ethan dead, Claire abducted another replacement for her baby, four year old Michael Bridges, but the BAU was able to save him before he met the same fate as Ethan.

After her arrest, Claire pled not guilty by reason of insanity. In her case, it wasn't just a ploy to get out of prison. She was mentally ill, and she only went off her meds because she had to while she was pregnant. Rather than prison, she was institutionalized. Once her psychosis was under control with medication and she was no longer a threat to herself or others, Claire Bates was released. It had been several years since her release, which begged the question why now?

Everything she did was about her son. That was where they started, with Garcia pulling his file from Social Services. Upon her release, Claire tried to get custody of her son, Jamie, but, in the eyes of Social Services, she was an unfit parent because of her history of mental illness. She did, however, get supervised visitation with her son. They needed to find out what happened during the last visit. They also needed to know if she was still on her meds.

With her history of mental illness, a real or imagined grievance could have triggered Claire. Was her son being mistreated in his foster home? Even if he wasn't, did Claire _think_ he was being mistreated?

"They put him in those silly blue sneakers and lime green Oxford. He hated those," Tara read aloud from the transcript of Claire's last phone call to the parents of the second boy she abducted with raised eyebrows. She looked up from the printout, frowning. "Based on this, it could be something as simple as her son wearing clothes that didn't meet her approval."

"It wasn't," Reid said, returning to the conference room from his desk, where he was calling the social worker who supervised Claire's visits with her son. "The last time Claire saw him he had a broken wrist from falling off the monkey bars. She became enraged, accusing the foster parents of being bad parents. The whole thing upset Jamie to the point that the social worker had to end the visit early."

"Did he really fall off the monkey bars?" Emily asked with healthy skepticism.

"The social worker says he did. It happened at school," Reid reported back. "He's been in the same foster home for three years, and this is the first time he's been hurt."

"Three years? Isn't that a long time for a foster kid to be in one home?" Derek questioned.

"Maybe if they weren't trying to adopt him," Reid responded. "The only thing stopping them is Claire. In order for him to be adopted, her parental rights have to be terminated first."

"And she's not going to do that," Emily said knowingly.

"Not voluntarily," Hotch specified. "Long-term mental illness is grounds for involuntary termination of her parental rights by the court. It will just take longer."

"That could be the stressor," Simmons mused.

"She feels like she's losing her son all over again," Tara concluded. "And to the same parents who were responsible for him at the time he was injured."

"But wouldn't the foster parents be the target of her rage?" JJ asked the obvious question.

"I think they were," Reid told them. "She showed up at their house after the visit with her son was cut short. The foster mother called the police, but Claire left before they arrived. That was the week before Christmas. She hasn't been seen or heard from by anyone since."

"In her mind, we're the police," Hotch stated matter-of-factly. "The BAU handled her arrest in 2008."

"It's not too much of a stretch for her to believe we were – _are_ – complicit in keeping her from her son," Emily conceded.

"Especially if she's off her meds," Derek said.

"Why stay on her prescribed antipsychotic medication if she's never getting her son back, no matter what she does?" Reid asked. It was a rhetorical question. He was playing devil's advocate, but maybe he felt compelled to jump to Claire's defense. Diana Reid had to go off her meds when she was pregnant with Spencer. What if he was taken away from his mom? Being the son of a paranoid schizophrenic wasn't easy, but Spencer Reid loved his mom. For that reason, he found himself feeling a strange sense of empathy for Claire Bates. "She did everything right when she was pregnant, and Social Services _still_ took her son away," he pointed out.

"Her son's still in Vegas. Would she leave Vegas when her son's there?" Simmons questioned.

"She might if she's given up on ever getting her son back," Hotch answered. "Adoption is permanent." He gave Emily a quick apologetic glance as he realized how his words might affect her, but she didn't look upset by what he said.

It was true. Adoption was permanent. Emily gave up her parental rights fourteen and a half years ago. She had already accepted that she had no rights to her daughter. She didn't like it, but she had accepted it.

And she would be reminded of it when she finally called her daughter's adoptive father to let him know what was going on.

Emily waited as long as she possibly could to make that call, but she couldn't, in good conscience, say nothing knowing Hannah would be easy prey when she was walking from her school to the Metro stop. They had no indication that the unsub would make a move now, but Emily wasn't willing to take that risk when it came to her child's safety, and she didn't think Steve would be either. The other parents who had received pictures were all planning to pick their kids up from school. Emily couldn't just pick Hannah up though, not without permission.

It was never going to be an easy call to make, but it would have been easier if they'd been able to narrow their suspect pool down to only one person. Instead, they had one sociopath and two psychopaths – all of whom would have a reason, however insane, to target the BAU team.

Emily was behind her closed office door, sitting stiffly in her desk chair, her spine perfectly straight, when she dialed Steve.

"Emily?" He answered after several rings, having stepped out of a meeting to take her call.

"I need to talk to you about Hannah," Emily began nervously. "Something happened today. Several of the agents on my team received pictures of their loved ones in the mail. I received a picture of Hannah."

"What kind of picture?" Steve asked. He was already worried, and he didn't know the half of it yet.

"It was taken on New Year's Eve when she was standing in front of my building, waiting for her ride to the party," Emily answered. "We think the pictures were taken by someone my team arrested…someone who was recently released."

"How would anyone even know about her?" Steve demanded, starting to sound accusatory.

"The only way they could have known is if they were watching me when she was staying with me," Emily admitted. "Right now, whoever's doing this just wants us to know that they're watching us," she continued in an attempt to reassure him. "We don't actually think Hannah's in danger." The _yet_ went unsaid. "But I would still feel more comfortable if she didn't go anywhere alone until we know more."

It took Steve several long seconds to respond. When the birth mother of his child showed up at his office out of the blue, he never in a million years would have imagined this happening. He was wishing Emily had never come back into their lives even as he resigned himself to trusting her with his daughter's safety. She was an FBI agent. This was her area of expertise, not his. Whatever else he could say about her (and at the moment anything he had to say wouldn't be very nice), he knew Emily loved Hannah and didn't want anything to happen to her. On some level, Steve knew it wouldn't be smart to cut the gun-toting FBI agent out of Hannah's life now, even if the gun-toting FBI agent was the reason an ex-convict knew who his daughter was in the first place. He thought he was being remarkably civil considering. "She gets out of school at 3:25," he told Emily as he looked at his calendar. "I have a meeting at three, but I can call my sister."

"If you need someone to go get her, I can do it," Emily offered.

"You said someone's watching you. Is she even safe with you?" Steve questioned.

"They already know about her," Emily replied warily. "As long as they know about her, she's safer with me than alone."

Right now Hannah would also be safer with her than she would be with Steve or with Steve's sister who was a stay-at-home mom, but Emily didn't say that.

"Okay, fine," Steve conceded grudgingly, recognizing the truth in Emily's words. "I'll text her to let her know you're picking her up. She goes to Westborough Prep. Do you know where it is?"

"Yes." Emily hesitated slightly before asking, "What do you want me to tell her if she asks why I'm picking her up?"

They spent the next few minutes discussing how much she could tell Hannah without scaring her any more than was absolutely necessary. All that was left was for Emily to tell her fourteen year old.

**A/N:** Thank you for reading. For anyone wondering, the unsubs from old cases that were mentioned are:

Danny Murphy from Season 4x21 A Shade of Gray

Jeremy Sayer from Season 6x05 Safe Haven

Claire Bates from Season 4x06 The Instincts


	29. Chapter 29

**A/N:** As always, thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter.

**Chapter 28**

There weren't a lot of students at Westborough Preparatory School who were picked up by a parent after school. It was one of a few select private high schools in the D.C. area with high tuition, which meant most of the students attending Westborough came from a family ranging from upper middle class to upper class. They were the sons and daughters of lawyers and doctors or politicians and business leaders. The student parking lot was filled with flashy sports cars and luxury SUVs. Many of the younger students either caught a ride from an older student or took the Metro home to an empty house because both of their parents were working professionals in a high-powered career. Instead of sitting in a long pickup line, Emily was able to idle right in front of the main entrance of the school, where she would see Hannah the moment the girl emerged from its doors.

While she waited, the agent scanned the perimeter of the old brick building, noting the location of the entrances and where the security cameras outside the building were located. From where she was parked, Emily heard the bell ring, signaling the end of class for the day. Within a matter of minutes, hundreds of teenagers, all of whom were wearing matching navy blue blazers with the school crest emblazoned on the top left-hand side over their chests, spilled out of the old brick building. Hannah was dressed the same as every other girl, but Emily was still able to pick her out of the crowd when she walked out with two girls who looked to be a year or two older than her. Emily thought they were probably friends from volleyball. Hannah had mentioned that she was the only freshman on the Varsity team. All three girls were tall and skinny and seemed to attract the attention of half the male population of the school. The older girls carried themselves with a sort of haughty arrogance that no high school freshman at the bottom of the proverbial food chain would possess. Compared to them, Hannah looked insecure, an overly eager smile on her face as the other two girls carried on a conversation that didn't really seem to include her, but they weren't excluding her either. Emily's first impression was that they knew Hannah looked up to them and might have even encouraged it. Maybe it made them feel important – or maybe she should say _more_ important than they already did. The profiler could tell from the way other kids were acting around them that the two older girls her daughter was with were popular. Emily's eyes narrowed behind her sunglasses as she watched the interaction, not sure she liked how desperate her daughter seemed to be to fit in. Emily remembered being that age and wanting so badly to be accepted. And look where it got her – fifteen and pregnant because she was afraid she would lose John and Matthew if she said no. At least Hannah was dealing with girls, not boys, but there were other types of peer pressure that wouldn't result in teenage pregnancy.

Hannah spotted Emily's car and said goodbye to her 'friends.' The young teenager slid into the passenger seat of her birth mother's grey sedan, offering the woman an easy smile that was much more natural than the one on her face mere seconds before. "Hey, Emily." The teenager immediately took her blazer off and then buckled her seatbelt. "Is this curbside pick-up service part of my grounding? Because I could get used to this, especially if one of those is for me," Hannah said with a longing look at the two takeaway coffee cups in the cup holders.

Emily handed the untouched peppermint mocha to the girl. "This one's yours."

"You're the best! Thank you," Hannah said appreciatively, immediately taking a long sip.

Emily was glad her daughter's question about why she was picking her up didn't require an immediate answer with the way it was posed and how quickly the girl moved on. Deciding to temporarily table that topic, Emily asked conversationally, "How was school?"

"Probably not as exciting as your day," Hannah replied, hyper-aware of the gun holstered on Emily's right hip – a visual reminder of her birth mother's job, not that she really needed a reminder. Emily hadn't worn her gun in Hannah's presence since the night they met when Emily left work in the middle of a case to find her daughter. "Did you shoot anyone today, Agent Prentiss?"

It was asked good-naturedly, with genuine interest in her day, but Emily still bristled at that form of address from Hannah, however lightly delivered. "Don't call me that," Emily said seriously, referring to her professional title. It lacked familiarity and intimacy to the point that it was almost insulting and hurtful. Emily knew Hannah's adoptive mom had been 'Mom,' and had no objection to her daughter calling her Emily. She just wanted to be a mother to her child, even if she never got the actual title.

Taken aback by how quickly the light mood had turned serious and the sudden sharpness in her birth mother's tone, Hannah glanced at the woman in surprise and then looked down. "Sorry," Hannah offered quietly.

When she looked to her right to check for traffic before turning onto the busy D.C. street the private high school was located on, Emily saw Hannah's downcast eyes and subdued demeanor. Emily sighed softly. "No, I'm sorry. I just…I had a bad day. I shouldn't have snapped at you, honey, but please don't call me that. I'm not an FBI agent to you."

"You're my mom," Hannah acknowledged, increasingly comfortable with the fact. "But you're also an FBI agent. You know, most moms don't have guns when they pick their kids up from school. It's kind of badass."

"I came from work," Emily pointed out the obvious.

"To make sure I go straight home?" Hannah guessed. Why else would either of her parents leave work early to pick her up from school? When she was grounded, Hannah usually just had to call her dad from the home phone when she got home.

"No. I didn't want you riding the Metro home alone today. I'll explain why when we get to your house," Emily told her daughter as she checked her rearview mirror for probably the hundredth time, making sure they weren't being followed. On the off chance the person who took the picture didn't know where Hannah lived already, Emily wasn't going to lead him or her there now. The agent was on high alert and wanted to wait until they were safely inside Steve's townhouse to have this conversation because she couldn't afford any distractions, and an upset kid would be a big distraction.

Picking up on the fact that something was wrong, Hannah looked at Emily anxiously. "Is my dad okay?"

"Yes, he's fine," Emily assured the girl. She thought about telling Hannah that she could call him if she wanted but remembered Steve would be in a meeting.

The rest of the short drive was quiet with the exception of the radio, which was turned on with the volume on low.

Emily didn't want to make her young teenage daughter afraid to be in her own home. Going in with her weapon drawn to clear the house would make the girl think there was something to be afraid of so Emily didn't do that. Instead, she just stayed close to Hannah as they moved inside the townhouse, her right hand never far from her holstered Glock.

The dog heard Hannah's key in the door and was waiting by the door to greet them, wagging his tail excitedly. "Hey, Alex," Hannah said as she kneeled down on the rug to pat him and press a kiss to the top of his furry head, laughing and pulling back a little when he tried to lick her face.

While Hannah was distracted with the dog, Emily looked around to see if anything seemed off to her. It wasn't her house and she wouldn't necessarily know if anything was out of place, but she would notice signs of a break in.

When Hannah got up from the floor, it was only to clip Alex's leash to his collar. "You can go sit down," Hannah told her birth mother hospitably. "I'll be right back. I just need to take him out."

"I'll go with you," Emily said.

Hannah left the porch without bothering to lock the front door. She felt safe in her neighborhood, which was exactly how every kid should feel, but it wasn't helpful in this situation. Emily knew there was a fine line between scaring Hannah any more than was absolutely necessary and making her teenager aware of the danger.

"Hannah," Emily called from the front porch.

"What?" Hannah asked, stopping halfway to the sidewalk to glance back over her shoulder.

"Lock the door," Emily told her, waiting expectantly for the fourteen year old to comply.

"I'm just taking him around the block," Hannah grumbled lightly even as she went back to lock the front door. They wouldn't even be gone for twenty minutes. Did she really need to lock the door?

"Thank you," Emily said when the teenager complied, however grudgingly. "Do you walk him every day after school?" Emily asked. She needed to know her daughter's normal routine if she was going to keep Hannah safe. Emily was already a cat person, not a dog person, and she liked the idea of the dog even less now because it gave the fourteen year old a reason to leave the safety of the townhouse.

Hannah nodded. "He's my dog," she said simply in response. Well, obviously, he was her dog, but what she meant was that he was _her_ dog, not the family dog. She realized she probably needed to explain that one a little more. "My twelfth birthday was, like, a month after my mom – my adoptive mom - died. I wasn't really in a celebratory mood. There was nothing I really wanted. But my dad…he woke me up that morning by putting a puppy in my bed. Alex," the fourteen year old said softly, smiling down at the golden retriever who was currently sniffing a patch of grass. "He was the best birthday present ever. He's my dog. I take care of him," Hannah finished proudly.

Okay, that made it hard for Emily to continue being annoyed by the dog's existence. Impossible actually. She could see how much her daughter loved the golden retriever and was touched Hannah shared that story with her. The girl was being more open with Emily than she had ever been - at least not without a lot of prompting. It was a true testament to her increasing comfort level with Emily and the growing closeness between them.

"Did you choose his name?" Emily asked curiously.

Hannah nodded again, a nostalgic expression coming across her face. "Alexander Hamilton," she offered in explanation. "We saw _Hamilton_ on Broadway. I was kind of obsessed with it when we got Alex." She didn't mention that the trip to New York was her last trip with her adoptive mom.

They continued talking as Hannah walked Alex until he finally found the perfect spot to go to the bathroom, with the young teenager dutifully picking up after him.

"Make yourself at home," Hannah told Emily once they were back inside the townhouse. "I'm just gonna change out of this stupid uniform and then we can talk." Having attended public school in Bethesda where she could wear jeans, Hannah hated wearing the required uniform for her private high school and complained about it any chance she got. Despite her protests, her dad had insisted on private school once they moved to D.C. from Bethesda. Hannah didn't know if she'd ever be comfortable in the blazer that made her feel like she was playing dress up in an adult's clothing and the ridiculous plaid skirt she had to wear even when it was freezing outside. She never stayed in uniform any longer than she had to.

Emily chuckled softly at the girl's disdain for the school uniform. "Aw, I think you look cute."

"I look like a porn star," Hannah corrected, making a face. The fourteen year old didn't actually know what a porn star looked like, but the idea of the sexy schoolgirl was a part of pop culture, and Hannah knew a plaid pleated skirt like the one she wore as part of her uniform was a key component of the look. "Pervy old men like girls in plaid skirts, but I don't think cute is the word they would use."

If she was trying to get a reaction out of her birth mother with the provocative statement, she succeeded marvelously.

Emily stared at her in complete and utter horror, her mouth hanging open even though she had no words. There weren't many people who could leave Emily Prentiss speechless. Hannah was now on the very short list of people to accomplish that feat.

The image of her young, impressionable daughter in a school uniform was forever ruined for Emily now. It didn't help that the fourteen year old had grown since the start of the school year and the uniform didn't fit quite as well as it did back in August. At just under five foot seven inches, Hannah was almost as tall as Emily now. The white button-down shirt covered her long torso, but once untucked as it was now, it rode up a little every time the young teenager moved, momentarily showing off the pale skin on her lower abdomen until she pulled it down self-consciously. She also had long legs, which made the skirt appear shorter than it really was. Emily could only conclude that Hannah had a point. All the girl needed was a black lacy bra and heels to complete the look – a cringeworthy thought for the mother. She really hoped her fourteen year old daughter didn't have a black lacy bra.

Hannah left her completely scandalized birth mother standing at the bottom of the stairs and went up to her room to change into a Northwestern sweatshirt and black yoga pants.

After Hannah changed her clothes, they finally sat down on the couch in the living room to talk.

Emily started the conversation with her daughter the same way she started the conversation with Steve. "Something happened today. Several of the agents on my team received pictures of their loved ones in the mail."

"Is everyone okay?" Hannah interrupted, showing a surprising amount of concern for the people she barely knew but knew were important to Emily. She really was a sweet and caring kid underneath all the snark and sarcasm.

"No one was hurt," Emily replied carefully.

"That's – that's good, right?" Hannah questioned, her birth mother's unusually somber demeanor scaring her a little. When she wasn't mad at her, Emily was usually all smiles and laughter, wit and sarcasm.

"It is," Emily agreed hesitantly. "But the pictures were just a message. It was intended to scare us. I received a picture of you."

"Are you…scared, I mean?" Hannah asked quietly, her dark eyes never leaving Emily's. It was normal for a child to base their own reaction to a new and scary situation on how their parents reacted to it, and although neither of them realized it, that was what Hannah was doing now.

Emily placed a comforting hand on her daughter's knee and looked the girl straight in the eye as she spoke with total conviction. "Nothing's going to happen to you," she said instead of answering the question directly. As an FBI agent, it wasn't a promise she could – or would - make to anyone else who was in Hannah's shoes. But as a mother, it was a promise she was making to her child – and one she intended to keep. Emily Prentiss was not going to let anything happen to her daughter.

Hannah nodded, believing Emily without question.

"I don't want you going anywhere alone," Emily told her daughter before giving the teenager a questioning look. "How long are you grounded for?"

"Two weeks," Hannah answered glumly. She had accepted the punishment for missing curfew without argument or complaint, but that didn't mean she was happy about being grounded. What teenager would be?

"It's actually good you're grounded because the only places you're going are home and school," Emily stated matter-of-factly, ignoring the baleful glare her daughter shot her. "It's just a precaution, but your dad and I talked, and, for now, one of us will be picking you up from school."

Hannah nodded in quiet acceptance. She wouldn't have been so accepting if she hadn't already been grounded. As it was, the only thing that was really changing for her was how she got home from school.

Emily was surprised that Hannah didn't have more questions – or concerns.

The truth was that Emily had been trying not to show her own fear in front of her daughter; and, if Emily wasn't afraid for her, Hannah didn't think there was anything to be afraid of. The woman's legendary poker face and ability to compartmentalize might have been counterproductive in this instance because her impressive calm façade was giving Hannah a false sense of security.

Hannah didn't know Emily's team specialized in finding serial killers because Emily had never gone into much detail about her job at the BAU. That was intentional on Emily's part. At first, Emily had been worried the kid she was trying to get to know would be even more closed-off with her if she knew Emily was a profiler and not just an FBI agent. No one liked being profiled. Now, it was more an attempt to protect her daughter from knowing things no child should. The people the BAU hunted did terrible things that gave grown men and women nightmares.

Unlike Jack and Henry, the other children who were being targeted and were old enough to understand some of what was going on, Hannah hadn't grown up with a parent who was an FBI agent. She had never visited her mother in the hospital when the woman was recovering from a stab wound or a bullet wound. She had never seen her parent come home beaten and bruised. Logically she knew Emily's job was dangerous, but she didn't really understand how dangerous it was.

It creeped the girl out a little to think that someone had been watching her, but whoever it was hadn't actually done anything to her and Hannah knew they could have. She thought her birth mother was probably just being overprotective.

In part because she was operating on limited information, Hannah wasn't taking this threat as seriously as she should have. That showed when the FBI profiler segued into giving the fourteen year old some basic safety tips. Hannah alternated between teenage annoyance that the older woman thought she didn't know this already and making light of the safety tips with smartass responses – responses that Emily probably would have found amusing at any other time, but there was nothing funny about her daughter's safety and Emily definitely wasn't laughing at the ill-timed jokes.

"Seriously, Emily?" Hannah interrupted the woman who was in full on lecture mode on stranger danger. "I'm fourteen, not four. I _know_ not to talk to strangers. Unless, of course, they have candy. If someone offers to break me off a piece of their Kit Kat bar…" Hannah's voice trailed off when she saw the distinctly unamused look on Emily's face.

"Do I need to remind you that you talked to Reid when you had no idea who he was?" Emily asked, referring to their impromptu meeting in the library.

"He said he worked with you at the FBI," Hannah responded defensively.

"And you believed him," Emily pointed out. "Did you even ask to see his badge?"

Hannah looked down, and Emily had her answer.

"Not everyone is who they say they are," Emily told the naïve child who had grown up in somewhat of a bubble – a bubble that Emily hated to burst.

After that Emily was able to get through the rest of the points that she wanted to make with minimal interruption from the smartass teenager. She knew none of the three suspects the team had identified would appear threatening to the average teenager. Two of the suspects were kids. Sure, they were over eighteen, but they were college age kids. Danny Murphy could easily pass as a high school student if he wanted to. And their other suspect was a pretty blonde woman who didn't look like she could hurt a fly. Hannah had to understand that not all bad guys looked like bad guys, and by the time Emily was done, she did.

When Steve got home, Hannah was working diligently on her math homework at the kitchen table while Emily checked her completed French homework. It was a decidedly domestic scene that would have felt so unbelievably normal if it wasn't for the reason Emily was there.

Emily and Steve exchanged terse but civil greetings. Emily quietly advised Steve to keep blinds drawn, windows locked, and doors locked. They had already agreed that one of them would pick Hannah up from school for at least the next couple of days. He told Emily he had been able to move everything he had scheduled the following afternoon and would be able to pick the teenager up and grudgingly agreed to let her know if he couldn't pick Hannah up on Friday. Because it was a holiday week and New Year's fell on a Tuesday, it was a short week with only three school days total. There were two school days remaining before the weekend.

It felt awkward to hug and kiss her daughter goodbye under the adoptive father's watchful eye, especially knowing how he felt about her at the moment, but Emily did it anyway, cherishing the feeling of having Hannah in her arms and knowing the girl was safe and whole and untouched by the bad in the world.

"I love you, Hannah," Emily murmured softly.

"Love you, too," the girl responded instantly.

Back at Quantico, the members of the team who were still there had finally managed to get a hold of Danny Murphy's parents. The Murphys claimed Danny was at home with them – something that was confirmed when they produced their eighteen year old son for a video conference that Penelope set up. Rossi and Reid spoke to him, and Danny denied ever having been in D.C. Based on that, they could rule him out as a suspect, but that still left them with two suspects. They'd had no luck locating either Jeremy Sayer or Claire Bates.

Jeremy Sayer was only thirteen when he was arrested, and he had stayed off the radar since his release. He was not a licensed driver in any state. There was no last known address for him. There was no employment history. If he was working, he was either doing something illegal or had found an employer that was paying him off the books. His parole officer had met him exactly one time. After that, Jeremy never darkened the door of the parole officer's office again and was therefore in violation of parole. There was a warrant out for his arrest in Nebraska, but the local police didn't usually invest a lot of time and effort in finding a parole violator. They prioritized open cases with unsolved crimes over parole violators whose crimes were committed several years ago.

Although it was nearing close of business in Washington, it was still early afternoon in Vegas. After getting an update from Rossi, Emily called a Las Vegas detective she had developed a good rapport with during their last case there and left a voicemail for him. She was hoping he would agree to do a welfare check on Claire Bates' residence and report back on whether it looked like anyone was currently living there.

When it came to the BAU family, everyone on the team would have worked through the night without complaint if they had any leads, but as it stood, there wasn't much they could do. There was no crime scene, no victim, and no evidence other than the pictures and envelopes which had already been processed.

The team reconvened in the morning, with Hotch and Morgan joining them again. Emily updated everyone on what the Vegas detective had reported. No one was home at Claire Bates' house and her car wasn't in the garage.

"Do you want me to put an APB out on her?" Penelope offered, eager to help find the evil person who wanted to hurt the BAU babies.

"On her and her car," Emily answered the tech analyst as she silently debated sending two members of the team to Vegas and two members of the team to the Midwest. They knew whoever took the pictures of their children was in the D.C. area. She wanted the team there, but they were somewhat limited in what they could do to find Claire and Jeremy from D.C. when any trail either of them left wouldn't have started in Washington.

Other than the welfare check on Claire Bates, there was no new information and no new developments. They were essentially waiting for a lead on Claire or Jeremy's whereabouts or for the next move in this revenge plot against the BAU.

"It's possible this isn't strictly revenge," Emily mused. Revenge would have been Danny Murphy's only motive, but both Jeremy Sayer and Claire Bates had something – or rather someone – else they wanted. "Jeremy was taking his rage at his own mother out on other maternal figures, but his mother was the real target of his rage. Penelope, you said she moved and changed her phone number. If he's been unsuccessful in finding her on his own, it's possible he thinks we'll tell him where she is to save our own kids."

"That's true, but I still think revenge on this team is part of it," Rossi said. "We stopped him from finishing what he started. Kendra and Carrie Sayer would probably be dead now if we didn't show up at the house when we did. The question is, which of us would he have the most anger toward?"

"That's easy. Me," Derek answered. "Prentiss and I went into the house together, but I was the one who cuffed the kid and took him out of there."

"You also attended his first parole hearing," Hotch pointed out.

"And I had nothing good to say about him," Derek said emphatically.

Tara shook her head, frowning at the logic that Derek - and therefore Hank - would be Jeremy's targets. "The families he annihilated were substitutes for Kendra and Caroline Sayer, a mother and daughter. If he's choosing substitutes, the only one targeted who has a daughter is Emily," Tara reasoned.

"Hannah is the only girl," Rossi conceded.

"She's also close in age to Carrie," JJ offered apologetically, not actually wanting Emily's daughter to be next on Jeremy's list.

"What about Claire Bates? The same thing could be said for her. It wouldn't just be revenge for her either," Luke pointed out.

"It would be about Jamie," Reid agreed, referring to Claire's son. "She may think we would trade her son for one of the kids she's targeting if she abducts one of them."

"The boys she took were substitutes for her son. He's the same age as Henry," JJ observed worriedly.

Matt gave JJ a questioning look, his eyes narrowed in thought. "Her son was a newborn. The boys she took were five years old and four years old."

"With her psychosis, she convinced herself the older boys were her son," Reid explained.

"What does that mean for us now?" Rossi asked. "Could she convince herself that Jack or Michael or even Hank is the same age as her son?"

"She could," Reid replied with a considering look on his face. "But I think it's more likely she would choose the boy closest in age to Jamie."

"Would it matter that Jamie's an only child?" Emily questioned with a glance at JJ. "Henry isn't, and he would be with Michael any time he's not in school."

"It might," Tara answered.

"In which case Jack would be the next closest substitute in both age and appearance," Hotch stated grimly.

Of course, none of them wanted their child to be the primary target, and each parent would continue to take every precaution with their own child until this was over, but if they could determine who the unsub would go after, they could put extra protections in place around that child. That was what they were trying to do. They just didn't have enough to do that. Not yet anyway.


	30. Chapter 30

**A/N:** As always, thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter.

**Chapter 29**

When she got to her office on Friday morning, the red light on Emily's desk phone indicated she had a new voicemail. Emily Prentiss was a field agent. She didn't sit behind a desk. The desk phone was primarily used by her to make outgoing phone calls when they happened to be working a case from Quantico. It wasn't the phone number she gave out. It wasn't even on her business cards. It was, however, listed in an internal employee directory. Usually if she had a voicemail, it was from someone within the Bureau, a news reporter who called into the main switchboard and was transferred to her desk phone by the operator, or a solicitor who had somehow gotten a hold of the number.

With an almost bored expression, Emily entered the password to access her voicemail and held the receiver to her ear as she waited. The second the voice that spoke into her ear said her name – her first name – she recognized that the caller was using a voice changer. There were apps for that purpose, some of which were free. Emily sat up straighter, stiffening in her chair, every muscle tense as the message played. She knew what was coming. She didn't know, couldn't know the content of the message, but she knew then that it was the person who sent the pictures.

"Emily. Did you get the picture?" There was a short pause, almost as if the caller was waiting for a response. "Do you know what I could have done to her? Bad things happen to girls when they're out alone after dark. You know that though. You're the FBI. Behavioral Analysis Unit. You think you know what I'm going to do next? See if you can stop me."

That was the end of the voicemail. The tone of it was clearly threatening, but no explicit threat was made.

Shaken, Emily hung up the phone. It took her a moment to be able to think rationally enough to start analyzing the voicemail through the lens of a profiler.

The time stamp of the call was 11:01 pm at night the day before. It seemed significant that it was almost exactly at 11:00 pm, as if the caller had waited until that hour to make the call. Why wait until that late to call unless the caller didn't want her to pick up?

Whoever he or she was, the caller didn't want a profiler on the other end of the phone. If the call came in when she was at her desk, Emily would have used all of her training and skills to try to get under the unsub's skin. If the unsub became angry or defensive, he or she would be more likely to let something slip.

The unwillingness to engage in a battle of wits was a sharp contrast with the smug tone of the voicemail. _You think you know what I'm going to do next? See if you can stop me._

Emily would expect someone who thought they were smarter than her - smarter than the whole BAU team - to _want_ to talk to them. Where was the challenge in leaving a voicemail? Anyone could leave a voicemail. There was no one to outsmart if there was no one on the other end of the phone. It was like playing chess against yourself. The feeling of victory was greatly diminished when there was no one to beat at the game.

Emily replayed the voicemail, paying closer attention to the word choice this time. She noted that the unsub didn't use Hannah's name. Was that because the unsub didn't know her name?

At that exact moment, JJ was at her desk listening to the voicemail left for her.

"Jennifer. Did you get the pictures?"

JJ went completely still when the digitally altered voice came across the speaker, listening to the message with a stricken expression.

"If I wanted to, I could have done more than take a few pictures. How long were they outside by themselves? Do you know what could have happened to your little peanut when big brother was busy playing soccer? And I thought the FBI was supposed to be the experts on kidnapping. What kind of an expert are you?"

JJ was seemingly frozen in place in her desk chair. She didn't know how long she sat there after the voicemail ended, feeling powerless against the nameless, faceless enemy, before Emily appeared in front of her.

"JJ?" Emily called the blonde profiler's name for the second time, her eyes narrowing in concern at the lack of response.

JJ finally snapped out of her stupor, blinking in surprise when she saw Emily. "Emily? I – there was a voicemail from the unsub," JJ told her in a shaky voice.

"I got one, too," Emily said, reaching across the desk to put her hand on top of JJ's hand and giving it a comforting squeeze as a physical, tactile way of showing her friend that she wasn't alone. They were all in this together.

"How are you so okay?" JJ wondered, basing her assessment that Emily was okay on her outwardly calm appearance. JJ knew it took a lot to rattle Emily Prentiss, but a threat to Hannah would be enough to do it. Sure, Emily was new to Hannah's life, but Hannah was still her child. JJ knew Emily loved the girl fiercely already. And yet, somehow, Emily managed to maintain her almost annoyingly perfect composure. How could any mother be that calm and collected when her child was in danger? Emily's stoicism made JJ feel like she was overreacting. It didn't _feel_ like they were in the same boat.

"I'm not," Emily admitted. "I'm afraid for Hannah. And I'm afraid that even if I can keep her safe, her dad won't let me be a part of her life after this."

"Has he said anything?" JJ asked, realizing for the first time that, out of all of them, Emily had the most to lose. The stakes were higher for her than for any of the other parents whose kids were unequivocally theirs. Emily had just been suffering in silence, as per usual.

"Not in so many words," Emily replied.

Knowing there was something Emily wasn't saying, JJ looked at her with a sympathetic expression. "You know you can't take anything he said when he was scared out of his mind too seriously," she told Emily reassuringly. "He'll calm down when this is all over."

"Maybe," Emily responded doubtfully.

It was actually less what Steve said to her and more just a feeling she had. It was the way he had looked at Emily when he walked in and saw her sitting at his kitchen table, checking his daughter's homework - a darkly accusatory look that said far more than any words could have. It was the carefully civil way he spoke to her like it took everything he had to control his temper.

Emily had a feeling the only reason the adoptive father was tolerating her continued presence in Hannah's life was because he knew he needed her help to keep the girl safe. He knew that, and he hated it because she was the reason Hannah _wasn't_ safe to begin with, but she was also the one best suited to protect her now. That had to be difficult for him to accept.

Whether it was because she didn't want to think about what Steve would do when he _didn't_ need her to protect Hannah anymore or because it was just in her nature to put others first, Emily deftly transitioned the subject back to JJ. "How'd Will take it?"

"About as well as can be expected," JJ said with a heavy sigh.

Will couldn't cut her out of the boys' lives, and JJ knew he would never do that even if he could, but he sure knew how to make her feel guilty about the effect her job had on Henry and Michael, whether it was because she wasn't there when one of them was sick and wanted her or…well, this. And this was bad. Really, really bad. This was so much worse than not being there to read a bedtime story or tuck them in at night. This was literally their lives they were talking about. This was not letting Henry ride the school bus with his friends in the morning because someone could grab him at the bus stop. This was not letting the boys play in the front yard of their dream home with the white picket fence because someone could take one or both of them. This was living their lives in fear because of her job.

If it were up to Will, JJ would never have gone back to the BAU after Strauss forced her out. Her job was and always had been the main source of contention between them. That aside, they had a happy marriage, but the strength of their relationship was being tested now more than ever before.

JJ had always justified being away from the boys to herself because she knew they were safe at home with Will, but this time she felt like a bad mother because her boys _weren't_ safe in their own home - and that was on her. Honestly, Will didn't have to say much about it because she already felt terribly guilty.

Fortunately, William LaMontagne Jr. was nothing if not a Southern gentleman. No matter how upset or frustrated he was with the situation they were in, he was still soft-spoken, chivalrous, and almost deferential to JJ. He was a good father, a good husband…just a good man. Their arguments never really escalated to fights, but they did argue about the same thing – namely her job – over and over again.

Emily winced sympathetically. "That well, huh?"

JJ nodded slowly. "Pretty much."

"I'm sorry, Jayje," Emily said sincerely.

They _were_ in the same boat, and it felt to both of them like they were up a creek without a paddle. They just had different coping skills and coping mechanisms - a result of very different upbringings.

Half an hour later they replayed the voicemails in the conference room with everyone, Hotch and Derek included, sitting around the table. By the time the team was finished dissecting the voicemails, Emily and JJ would be able to recite the words that were haunting their every thought from memory.

"Claire Bates used a voice changer when she called the parents of the boys she had," Hotch pointed out the similarity in MO.

"Yeah, but anyone can use a voice changer these days, Hotch," Derek said somewhat dismissively. "There's software and apps for that. Isn't that right, baby girl?" Derek looked to the tech analyst for support. He really thought Jeremy Sayer was behind this and didn't want the team discounting him because of a voice changer anyone could get off the Internet.

Penelope lit up instantly at the old nickname coming from those luscious lips. "Oh, yes, there _is_ an app for that, sugar lips," she said with the harmlessly flirtatious smile reserved just for him. Oh, how she missed him. She wished he was there for a different reason, but she was glad he was there. Was that bad? "There's an app to make your sexy voice sound like a robot or Darth Vader or – and this is my personal favorite because who doesn't love an Australian accent? – Chris Hemsworth. The point being that there is no shortage of apps for that very purpose. Some of them only work if you record your voice _before_ you make the phone call, but some work in real time. Our mystery caller may have been using the kind where you pre-record your voice."

Garcia had already given a highly complex explanation as to why she couldn't pinpoint the location of the caller, but she'd lost them all by going too deep into the technical weeds. Suffice it to say, they didn't know where the calls were made from. What they _did_ know, thanks to her, was that there were actually four calls that came into the main line from an unknown, untraceable number even though only Emily and JJ had voicemails. The other two attempts must have been for Hotch and Morgan, neither of whom were current employees, but there was no operator to confirm that. At night it switched over to an electronic directory where callers entered the first three letters of the last name of the person they were trying to reach and were connected to that person's extension automatically. The unsub may have gotten frustrated when he or she couldn't find Aaron Hotchner or Derek Morgan in the electronic directory.

"There's also the fact that Claire Bates didn't leave voicemails," Rossi clarified. "She actually talked to the parents of the boys she had. That's an important distinction here."

"With the timing of these phone calls, I think it's safe to assume that the unsub didn't want to talk to us," Emily said. "Why wait that late to call if not to increase the chance of being sent to voicemail?"

Reid's brow was furrowed in contemplation as he re-read the transcripts of Claire Bates' phone calls and compared them with the notes from the interviews with Jeremy Sayer's living victims, paying special attention to the words they used. It just reinforced what he was thinking. He looked up from the papers that were spread out in front of him. "I think it's a male. He's talking like he's smarter than JJ and Emily. Smarter than all of us. He's emphasizing the competition aspect."

"So you think it's Jeremy?" Derek questioned, going back to the only male suspect they had left.

"Maybe," Reid replied distractedly, his brain working at a rapid speed.

"But didn't Claire Bates tell the moms they were bad mothers?" Luke spoke up somewhat hesitantly since he was nowhere near as familiar with the case as Reid was. "Isn't that kind of what the unsub's doing now?"

Penelope immediately went on the defensive with the fierceness of a rabid dog. "Luke Alvez, you better not be saying my girls are bad mothers!"

"I'm not," Luke said quickly, eyes wide as he looked around the table, relieved to see that the feisty tech analyst was the only one who seemed to take offense to it, and that was probably only because he was the one who said it. Actually, on second thought, JJ had an almost pained look on her face even though she hadn't said anything. Crap. Was she really upset because of him? The poor guy started trying to backpedal instantly. "I'm just saying that's what the unsub was saying." He decided to just stop talking before he made it any worse and let his voice trail off.

"JJ, do you actually call Michael your little peanut?" Reid asked suddenly. Although it had the unintended effect of bailing Luke out, Reid had been so lost in his own thoughts that he didn't even realize Luke needed bailing out.

"Uh, no," JJ said, a little surprised by the random question. "Why?"

"It's just that Claire Bates referred to Ethan Hayes and Michael Bridges by name or by the pronoun 'he,'" Reid explained why he was asking. "She never used pet names."

"Jeremy did. Oh, what was it he called his sister?" Emily said, trying to remember. "It was like he was mocking his mother. Mommy's little angel?"

"That's it," Derek told her, remembering the moment he heard it.

"It's possible his mother called him her little peanut," Reid suggested tentatively.

"I don't think so, kid," Derek shot that idea down. "Jeremy's twin died in the womb. Mrs. Sayer blamed him."

"She was very religious," Emily added as further explanation.

"She thought he was born evil," Rossi surmised, not sure he entirely disagreed with the mother. Born that way or not, at just thirteen Jeremy Sayer was evil incarnate.

"It's unlikely she would have used terms of endearment when she was talking to him," Emily stated matter-of-factly.

"But he would have heard her use them when talking to his sister," Tara pointed out. "And it would have made him jealous. His mother probably wasn't affectionate with him. She may have been downright cold and distant toward him. Until his sister was born, he probably thought she was incapable of love, but seeing how different she was with his sister would have made him incredibly resentful of Carrie."

"Right or wrong, a lot of parents have favorites when they have more than one kid," Hotch said. Both Matt and JJ were quick to deny it, but he ignored their protests and continued, "But this is different. This is extreme. Mrs. Sayer would have taken Carrie's side in every fight."

"And with good reason," Derek interjected. "Hotch, he broke Carrie's arm. That's not normal sibling rivalry."

Hotch barely glanced at Derek. "Mrs. Sayer may have let Carrie get away with things that Jeremy would have been punished harshly for. Any time anything went wrong, she would have blamed Jeremy whether he was responsible or not. Imagine a vase is broken. She didn't see who did it, but she automatically blames him. To say she wasn't always fair to him would be an understatement," he finished the point he was trying to make.

"That degree of favoritism is a form of emotional abuse," Tara told them.

"But not all kids who are abused try to kill their mothers," Rossi reminded everyone.

"He's been out for a year already, and he hasn't done anything wrong yet," Luke spoke up again, apparently feeling brave.

"Only because he doesn't know where to find his mom and his sister," Derek countered easily.

"Let's assume for a minute that it is Jeremy doing all this," Rossi began pragmatically. "Last known location is Nebraska. How does he get from there to here? Does he steal a car? Take the bus?"

"Garcia, can you find out if there were any stolen vehicles with Nebraska plates found in D.C. in the last two weeks?" Hotch asked.

Nothing came up on a stolen car with Nebraska plates, but Penelope finally got a hit from the APB on Claire Bates in the early afternoon.

Penelope Garcia ran – okay, really she speed walked, which was as close as she came to running in a dress and heels – from her lair to the BAU conference room where the profilers were still gathered. "I have news," she announced as the burst through the door, immediately attracting the attention of everyone in the room. "I don't know if I'd call it good news, but, in a weird, twisted way, it's good news for us because it means there's one less evil person in the world who could have it out for all of my precious babies."

"Garcia," Hotch said with just a hint of impatience creeping into his voice.

"Sorry. Um, the locals in sin city found Claire Bates' body. She killed herself," Penelope told them as feelings of sadness at a death that didn't have to happen and relief that the woman who once killed a five year old little boy wouldn't get anywhere near her godson warred inside her simultaneously.

"She killed herself? How?" Reid inquired with morbid curiosity, the genius inside him always wanting to know everything so he could make sense of it.

"Okay, this is where it gets really messed up – like scar your kid for life messed up," Penelope said, making a face. "You know how Jamie hurt his wrist falling off the monkey bars at school? Well, she hung herself from those same monkey bars. School was out for the holidays so she wasn't found until Wednesday. They just called me because of the APB."

There was a brief moment of silence as the agents in the room contemplated that, some of them like Reid and Emily feeling empathy for the dead woman in spite of the fact that she took a little boy's life back in 2008.

Claire felt like she was losing her own son all over again. Her last visit with him ended early, with Jamie upset and not wanting to spend any more time with her.

The process of involuntarily terminating Claire's parental rights was under way. It was only a matter of time before the foster parents became Jamie's new parents – people who not only refused to let Claire see her son when she showed up on their doorstep, but who also called the police on her.

Claire Bates probably felt like everyone was conspiring to keep her son away from her – Social Services, the foster parents, the court system, the police. In a rapid downward spiral, she went to the one place where her ten year old son spent more time than anywhere else – his school - in an attempt to feel closer to him at a time when she felt desperate and alone. In the dark of the night, she wandered to the empty playground that was part of the elementary school campus and hung herself from the monkey bars her son had fallen from.

Emily could imagine the despair Claire must have felt when the foster parents kept her from her son. The profiler had felt just a fraction of that despair any time she thought Steve was going to tell her she couldn't see Hannah anymore. To the adoptive father's credit, he had yet to actually deny her access to her daughter, but there were times when he had been close. Emily couldn't help but wonder if this would be the last straw for him.

"With Danny Murphy at home with his parents in Jersey and Claire Bates dead, we're down to one suspect. Jeremy Sayer," Derek said.

There were times when they all just knew something, and this was one of those times for him. Call it gut instinct. He knew it was Jeremy Sayer. He could feel it.

He hoped he was wrong, but if he was right, it was going to be really bad.

Jeremy killed nine people, and that was when he was only thirteen.

Derek didn't even want to think about what Jeremy would be capable of now.

The way he saw it, if Jeremy went after Emily, it would be because mother and teenage daughter were surrogates for his own mom and sister. It fit the profile. But the profile also said Jeremy was a kid filled with intense hatred and rage. He would terrorize anyone who got in his way, and Derek Morgan had been an immovable object in his path to revenge. Yeah, the kid may go after Emily, too, but _he_ was the one who actually slapped the cuffs on the kid. _He _was the one who dragged the kid out of the house, practically kicking and screaming. _He_ was the one who showed up at the kid's first parole hearing and made damn sure the kid didn't go free.

There was no question in Derek Morgan's mind that the little bastard would have it out for him.

With no new evidence and no other suspects at the moment, they agreed to focus their efforts on Jeremy Sayer and went back through every detail of the case with a fine-tooth comb.

They discussed at length how the profile could have changed. Jeremy was only thirteen when he was arrested. He was twenty-one now. How would the last eight years have changed him?

The brain wasn't fully developed until age twenty-four or twenty-five. One of the areas of the brain that matured late was the prefrontal cortex, which was important in impulse control, risk-taking behavior, and judgment. That area of Jeremy's brain would still be maturing.

There were various theories on personality development. Sigmund Freud and Abraham Maslow were just two of the many scientists who had their own theories on different stages of development. Many of them agreed that personality was already defined at an early age, some saying as early as three years old, and that it usually stayed the same although it was possible for life experiences to change someone's personality.

Reid went into professor mode as he spoke about the science of it all, with Tara weighing in on the psychological aspects.

The profilers also had to take into account how spending his adolescence imprisoned amongst convicted criminals, some of whom had committed crimes even worse than his, would have affected Jeremy. Inmates bragged about their crimes. Even though they were behind bars, they boasted about all the times they _hadn't_ been caught, all the bodies the cops would never find. Jeremy would have learned things from their stories and may be a more sophisticated killer now because of it. He would be more dangerous than ever before.

Emily decided to send Tara and Luke to Nebraska to talk to Jeremy's cellmate, the prison guards, and the warden. Her hope was that they would leave the prison with a lead.

They still had no actual proof that it was Jeremy. They couldn't prove he was in Washington. They couldn't prove he sent the pictures. They couldn't prove he left the voicemails. All they had was a working theory. It was a good theory, but they needed evidence to back it up.

They had painstakingly gone through every single case the four agents targeted by the unsub worked where the person convicted either had children or targeted children and was now free. Danny Murphy, Claire Bates and Jeremy Sayer were the only convicted killers who seemed to be likely suspects.

But what if they were wrong? What if they missed something?

It was going to be a really long weekend for all of them if they didn't get a break in the case. There was no school or daycare over the weekend. Would the unsub decide that it was the perfect time to finally make a move?


	31. Chapter 31

**A/N:** I'm sorry this chapter took so long. I've been busier than usual with work, classes, and family. I was also sick (thankfully not Covid), but I'm feeling better and up to writing again.

The good news is that I'm about halfway through with the next chapter so it shouldn't be too long before the next update.

**Chapter 30**

Jeremy liked scaring people. He couldn't make people like him, but, if he wanted, he could make them do things out of fear. It was fun for him to have that kind of power over someone else.

His mom hated him. She had always hated him. But she loved Carrie though. She would say anything, do anything to save her perfect little angel.

The last time Jeremy had Carrie right where he wanted her, he made his mom finally admit how she really felt about him. She admitted that she hated him before he was even born.

He didn't know what he would make her do this time.

Apologize? Beg for forgiveness?

There was nothing she could possibly say that would make him forgive her. She would beg, but not for forgiveness. She would beg for Carrie's life. Oh, he would enjoy the look on her face when the blade of her own kitchen knife sliced her little angel's neck open.

He just had to find them first.

When he finally got out, he went back to the house he grew up in, only to find a different family living in it.

Finding his mom and Carrie was a game to him. Hide and seek.

He didn't think they'd be too hard to find. It was a small town. There was only one high school; but, after watching the school for a week and never once seeing his sister, Jeremy wondered if they left town.

They could run, but they couldn't hide.

At first he thought he could find them on the Internet, but all of the searches he tried came up frustratingly empty. It was almost like Kendra Sayer and Carrie Sayer had vanished off the face of the earth.

What if they changed their names? What if the FBI set them up with new names and a new life somewhere where he would never find them?

The asshole fed that showed up at his parole hearing _hated_ him. Jeremy wouldn't put it past him to help hide his mom and sister.

Derek Morgan. That was the name of the asshole fed. It was in the court documents from his first parole hearing. And, unlike his mom and sister, Derek Morgan was all over the Internet in news clips and articles about the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit - articles and news clips that Jeremy spent hours going through.

It wasn't hard to piece together which feds had been part of the BAU when they arrested him – Jennifer Jareau, Aaron Hotchner, David Rossi, Spencer Reid, Derek Morgan, and Emily Prentiss.

Jeremy recognized Emily Prentiss as the bitch who held his mother back when he had Carrie.

He'd been so close, only to have the stupid feds ruin everything.

Personal information about the feds was harder to come by, but he'd gotten good at Internet searches and he had all the time in the world to do endless searches until he found what he was looking for.

He got Savannah's name from the online archives of a marriage announcement in a Chicago paper. It was Savannah's social media that gave Jeremy the information he needed to find Derek Morgan's happy family.

In one of his many Google searches for "Aaron Hotchner," Jeremy stumbled across Jack Hotchner's name and picture on the soccer roster of a D.C. high school website. Hotchner wasn't a common name and the location of the high school was promising.

He found the other feds through a combination of persistent cyber stalking and, once he made his way to Virginia, actual stalking. Some of them were harder to find than others – Emily Prentiss was practically a ghost on social media. Jeremy took it in turns to follow the agents when they left Quantico at the end of the day before focusing in on just the ones who had kids.

Parent-child relationships fascinated Jeremy Sayer. When he was younger, he used to watch his mom with Carrie and wonder why she didn't love him like that. Then he started watching other parents with their kids. He was always amazed that they all seemed to think their kids were so perfect.

As an older kid, Jeremy took a kind of vicious glee in telling on other kids for any wrongdoing. He would wait for the love in the parents' eyes to turn into the disgust and hatred his mom had for him, but it never happened. All it ever did was make everyone else's parents hate Jeremy.

Everyone hated Jeremy.

He couldn't make anyone like him, but he could make them do what he wanted.

By now Jeremy knew where all the feds lived – or at least he thought he did.

After following Jack Hotchner to Jessica's house one day after school, Jeremy jumped to the conclusion that Jessica was Aaron Hotchner's wife, not his sister in law, and that Jessica's house was their house.

When he was following Emily, he saw Hannah shuttled from Emily's condo to Steve's house. He thought Emily and Steve must be divorced parents who shared custody of Hannah. He couldn't have known what their relationship really was.

Jeremy had been watching all of them, some of them more than others, as he determined his next move.

This wasn't going to be like it was last time. He wasn't thirteen anymore. He didn't look like a scared, vulnerable kid. And, even if he did, these were feds, not unsuspecting mothers who would take pity on him and take him home with them like some stray dog.

The only way he was getting into the homes of the feds would be by breaking in. His time in their homes would be short-lived unless he could get the upper hand.

He knew he could get the upper hand if he could just get to their kids. If even just one of their kids was at his mercy, the feds would give him whatever he wanted. And what he really wanted was to find his mom and sister. Until then he was enjoying messing with the feds. Taunting them was half the fun, but he was tiring of anonymous notes and phone calls. It was time to step up his game.

Jeremy had realized by now that it would be too hard to get his hands on one of the little kids. The toddlers didn't really go anywhere without their parents. He wouldn't be able to get little Hank alone. And, although Jeremy would never admit it, he knew he was no match for Derek Morgan physically. With Derek ever-present, Jeremy wasn't getting anywhere near the asshole fed's only child. No matter how much Jeremy hated the kid's father, little Hank Morgan wouldn't be his trump card in the game he was playing…not if he was playing to win.

Before he moved on to one of the older kids who actually left mommy and daddy's side, Jeremy had one last thing in mind to mess with Derek though.

Jeremy Sayer crept around to the back of the empty two-story house. He knew from scoping it out that the house had an alarm system. Of course it did. It was the house of a fed.

Jeremy figured the alarm would go off immediately if he broke in through the front door, but he didn't do that. He used a rock to smash the window on the back door and reached in through the broken glass to open the door. The alarm would still go off whenever it detected motion inside the house, but Jeremy would be long gone by the time anyone – cops or feds – showed up.

This wouldn't take long.

* * *

For only being in the house ten minutes max, Jeremy Sayer sure did a lot of damage.

There was no question that it was Jeremy. Derek's doorbell camera caught the smug little bastard on his way out. Jeremy didn't even try to hide his face. No. Instead, he looked right into the camera with his middle finger in the air. It was one big _fuck you_ to Derek.

The family room looked like a seriously pissed off kid had thrown the world's worst tantrum in it. The glass from the picture frame that had been on an end table was smashed, shards of glass sticking out in the carpet. The picture of the proud new parents holding their newborn son that was in the frame had been ripped right down the middle. The pages of one of Hank's children's books – _The Giving Tree –_ had been torn out and ripped into tiny little pieces of paper that littered the floor.

The destruction of the family room was nothing compared to Hank's bedroom. The room Derek and Savannah had painted blue for their little boy looked like a bomb had gone off in it. Maybe that was because a bomb had, in fact, gone off in there. Hank's favorite teddy bear had been blown to smithereens, along with most of the little boy's treasured toys. Derek's hand was curled into a fist around what was left of the beloved bear's brown fuzzy head.

"It was a small pipe bomb," Derek told Rossi and Reid, both of whom had come as soon as he called. Emily was there, too, but she had stepped out of the room to make a phone call.

Neither Hotch or JJ were coming – they didn't want to leave their own kids in case they were next on Jeremy's list, and Derek couldn't say that he blamed them.

Tara and Luke were halfway to Nebraska– a trip that was unnecessary now that they had Jeremy Sayer on video. Still, maybe they would learn something new from their interviews with Jeremy's cellmate, the prison guards, and the warden at the prison where Jeremy spent his teenage years.

It honestly hadn't occurred to Derek to call Matt Simmons since he barely knew the guy.

Emily hadn't called Matt either. It was 5:00 pm on a Friday. She knew he was looking forward to dinner and a game night with Kristy and the kids. She didn't want him to have to come back in when they didn't need him. As it was, there were three agents at Derek's house – herself, Rossi, and Reid – plus a former agent who still had the experience and skill set to be an asset at a crime scene. They didn't need any more people there right now. Derek had taken one look at the amateur pipe bomb and told her there was no need to call in the bomb squad.

"Kid stuff," Derek continued with his assessment of the pipe bomb. "Anyone with access to Google could make this thing."

"He's never used explosives before," Reid said, referring to Jeremy. "I wonder if he knows about your expertise in that area."

Instantly recalling the number of past BAU cases that involved bombers, Reid knew it was feasible that Jeremy found an article or news clip where Derek had spoken to the press about one.

As a rule, bomb threats generated a lot of press. It was usually the Unit Chief who spoke to the press for the team – a role Derek occupied for a while – but it wasn't uncommon for any member of the BAU team to be interviewed. It was just a matter of reporters catching them at the right time.

Reporters gathered outside the homes of victims and known suspects and lay in wait like vultures outside of police precincts. If they got wind of FBI involvement, they assumed there was a story there and they didn't stop until they got their story.

"If he did, he may have seen detonating a bomb in your house as some kind of sick joke," Rossi said.

They all agreed that was what Jeremy intended with the pipe bomb in Hank's room. He had to know that no one was home to be hurt by it. It was nothing more than a juvenile prank on an authority figure, an act of angry defiance against the agent who ultimately caught him when he was the ripe age of thirteen.

The change in MO was troubling because it made Jeremy's behavior harder to predict, but it wasn't the first time Jeremy's MO had changed.

Jeremy Sayer was a family annihilator. He killed families. And yet one of his victims was a single man - a reverend who made the grave mistake of offering a vulnerable thirteen year old hitchhiker a ride.

Jeremy's weapon of choice was a knife, but it hadn't always been that way. Mrs. Sayer said there was one Thanksgiving when he tried to poison the family's Thanksgiving dinner.

All of Jeremy's crimes up until now were crimes of opportunity. If he had the opportunity to hurt someone, he took it, and he used whatever he could get his hands on to do it.

It wasn't such a stretch that he would take out his rage on Derek Morgan in this destructive manner when he realized he couldn't get to Hank.

Jeremy made a mistake in letting the BAU know he was coming. Now that they knew someone was going after their kids, the agents were all on high alert. It would be harder for Jeremy to get anywhere near their kids now. It showed Jeremy's stunted emotional maturity level that he had been unable to resist taunting them with the photos and prank phone calls. He had only made things harder on himself by giving them a head's up.

When Emily ended her phone call and returned to Hank's bedroom, she caught Derek's eye. "We're going to move you, Savannah and Hank to a hotel. Your protective detail will meet us there."

"A hotel?" Derek shook his head, turning her down without a second thought. "Thank you, but no. I'm sending Savannah and Hank to stay with my mom in Chicago."

He decided that the moment he saw the destruction of their home. He didn't want his wife or son in the same zip code as Jeremy Sayer.

Penelope got them on the next flight to Midway at Derek's request. Savannah was already on her way to the airport.

"What about you? You're not going with them?" Emily asked him.

"While Jeremy's still out there?" Derek said incredulously. It wasn't that Derek didn't trust Emily and the rest of the team to catch Jeremy. It was just that now it was personal for him. "Emily, he came into my house. He detonated a bomb in my son's room. There's no way I'm walking away from this now."

"Okay," Emily conceded, having expected no less. It wasn't technically his job anymore, but Derek Morgan was an alpha male who believed it was his job to protect his family. That was what he was doing now. She was trying to give him an out, but she knew he wouldn't take it. She still had to try. "You know, you can still take the hotel room and protective detail, even if it's just you."

"I'm staying right here," Derek insisted stubbornly. He wanted to fix Hank's bedroom. He didn't want Savannah or Hank to see it like this. "And if Jeremy comes back here, I'll be waiting for him."

No one missed the threat there, but if anyone had asked Derek if it was a threat, he would have said no. It wasn't a threat. It was a promise.

"I don't think he will," Rossi voiced his opinion. He didn't say it, but he thought Emily and, more specifically, Hannah would be next on Jeremy's list for no other reason than because Hannah was the only girl and the closest in age to Jeremy's sister. Emily already knew Hannah was in danger. She didn't need Rossi telling her what she already knew. His MO might have changed, but they still knew what made Jeremy Sayer tick. Now that he had gotten his childish revenge on the agent who arrested him when he was thirteen, Rossi expected Jeremy to fall back into old patterns. With that in mind, he turned to Emily. "You think you can swing a protective detail for Hannah, Jack and the LaMontagne boys?"

"Believe me, I tried," Emily told him. As the leader of the BAU, it was her job to keep everyone on the team safe. She had fought hard for a protective detail for everyone Jeremy had targeted, but she had lost that fight before it even started. She averted her eyes before continuing in a disheartened tone. "But there's no evidence linking Jeremy to the voicemails or the photos. And even if there was, it's not enough for Cruz to justify a protective detail for everyone. The only reason he could justify it for Derek is because of what happened here today." She was repeating what she was told, but it was obvious she was bitter about it herself.

"I didn't think so," Rossi said with a knowing expression. Protective details were expensive. Before they would pay someone to sit on the BAU kiddos round the clock, the higher ups would have to be convinced that Hannah, Jack and the LaMontagne boys were in clear and imminent danger. Otherwise, they would see it as paying big bucks for a protective detail who would essentially be waiting for something that may never happen. David Rossi didn't have to like it, but he knew all-too-well how the Brass could be. There was a reason he had never wanted the Unit Chief job. He didn't think he could stomach dealing with bureaucrats and red tape day in and day out the way Emily had to. "So we're on our own," Rossi summed the situation up grimly.

"Unfortunately," Emily said.

* * *

Between JJ and Will, Henry and Michael had two law enforcement officers, both of whom had weapons, to keep them safe. Jeremy Sayer would have to be an idiot to try to break into the LaMontagne home, and no one thought Jeremy was stupid.

With Hank on the next flight to Chicago's Midway International Airport and everyone agreeing that the LaMontagne boys were higher risk targets for Jeremy, that just left Jack and Hannah.

After they split up at Derek's house, Emily went straight to Steve's townhouse while Rossi made one pitstop before showing up unannounced at the Hotchner residence.

When Hotch opened the door, he gave Rossi a questioning look. "Dave? What are you doing here?"

"It's been too long since we hung out." Rossi tried to deflect, knowing Hotch wouldn't appreciate him being there for the Hotchner men's protection. Rossi held up the pizza box and six-pack of beer he brought with him. "Come on," he said cajolingly. "I brought pizza and beer."

Hotch knew there had to be more to it than that but invited Rossi in anyway. The two old friends made their way back to the kitchen, where Rossi deposited the pizza box on the kitchen counter and put the six-pack in the fridge after handing Aaron one and taking one for himself.

When they both had drinks and were seated comfortably in the living room, Hotch tried again. "Do you want to tell me what you're really doing here?"

Rossi sat back a little and glanced at Hotch, knowing the other man wasn't going to let this go. "Look, I just figured you could use a little extra firepower if you get any unexpected visitors tonight."

"And by that, you mean Jeremy Sayer," Hotch deduced easily. "Did Emily send you?"

"Emily, huh?" Rossi said with a big grin. He finally had the chance to ask Hotch about something he had noticed since they'd all been working together again. "No, she didn't. I volunteered," Rossi answered Hotch's question before moving on to his own question. "Since when is she Emily? Don't think I haven't noticed that you're not calling her Prentiss anymore." He didn't want to call his friend out on that in front of everyone, but now it was just the two of them. Jack had just gotten home from practice and was in the shower.

"It's her name," Hotch said dismissively, trying to downplay the significance.

"It is," Rossi agreed. "But that's never stopped you from calling her Prentiss before."

In fact, Hotch had almost exclusively called Emily 'Prentiss' the entire time he was Unit Chief of the BAU.

"That was when I was her direct supervisor and we were on the job," Hotch pointed out. "Right now I'm not her supervisor. I'm her friend."

"Just how good a friend are we talking about here?" Rossi asked somewhat suggestively. The switch from 'Prentiss' to 'Emily' wasn't all Rossi had noticed. He saw the way Hotch had been looking at Emily when he didn't think anyone else was paying attention, the younger man's eyes subconsciously telegraphing his newfound interest in her. David Rossi was enough of a ladies man to know what that look meant. The only real question was if Aaron Hotchner was going to act on it.

Rossi thought Hotch had been alone for far too long. Aaron Hotchner was a good man and deserved to find someone who would make him happy. If that someone was Emily…well, she could do a lot worse. Rossi loved both of them and just wanted to see them both happy. That was why he was meddling.

Neither Aaron Hotchner or Emily Prentiss were the type to take risks with their hearts. They might need a little help in that department. That was where Rossi came in.

David Rossi had an ulterior motive when he showed up at Hotch's front door with pizza and beer.

He was going to find out what, if anything, was going on between Hotch and Emily. And if nothing had happened yet, Rossi was going to give Aaron the push he needed to _make_ something happen.

While Rossi was busy needling Hotch, Emily was parked in front of Steve's townhouse. That was where she would stay, keeping a silent watch over the house unbeknownst to her daughter or her daughter's adoptive father.

**A/N:** As always, thank you for reading. I did the best I could writing Jeremy's point of view, but I'm not going to lie…it was a struggle. I think that's part of why this chapter took me so long. As you can probably tell, I'm not a profiler or an expert in psychology. I hope the things Jeremy's doing in my story make sense for the character and feel at least somewhat plausible.

When I was planning this story line out, I went back through old episodes, looking for an unsub that I could see (a) realistically being released from prison by 2018/2019, (b) targeting the children of the profilers instead of the profilers themselves, and (c) potentially going after Hank Spencer Morgan, Jack Hotchner, and / or Hannah. I also didn't want it to be immediately obvious to the profilers who the unsub was or which kid(s) had the biggest targets on their back. I wanted there to be a few possible unsubs. I think it was probably semi-predictable, but hopefully not so predictable that it's an awful story line.

Anyway, I'm really curious what you think of how I'm doing with writing the first real bad guy of this story. Did you like seeing Jeremy's point of view? Constructive criticism is welcome. It can only help me for the next bad guy because we do have more bad guys coming later.

We're getting close to the end of this particular story line (not the story, just this story line), and the next chapter will be pretty action-packed and hopefully will be worth the wait for everyone who stuck with me. Thank you again for reading!


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